Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Carwood Lipton has always had a habit of taking in strays.

Really, he'd always loved animals, and the only reason he decided against becoming a veterinarian is because he didn't like seeing them hurt all that much, and he especially didn't like saying bye to them, whenever and however that time came.

Officially, he was never allowed to have a pet growing up, what with all the borders around. Unofficially, he had loads of pets growing up because he'd see an animal and pick it up and bring it back home with him, no matter what kind of animal it was, much to his mama's chagrin.

He supposed it started back when he was a really little kid, maybe only 3 or 4, and it had just rained so there were loads of worms out, crawling through the dirt. George was too little then to play out in the mud with him, so he stayed inside with their mother while Carwood and his papa tromped through the dirt outside. They weren't actually supposed to be looking for worms; no, they were supposed to be out collecting eggs from the hens they kept out back, since it was easier to collect their own eggs for their boarders' meals than go all the way to a grocery store to buy more every single day.

Carwood had followed his papa out to the chicken coops because he'd insisted that he could help, but along the way he got distracted by the worms making their way through the dirt. He'd been fascinated and had stopped as soon as he saw one, wondering how it moved like it did, scrunching and the unscrunching itself, no eyes that Carwood could see. He picked it up, and it was slimy, and it made him giggle. His papa had gone on ahead to the chicken coop, but he stopped and looked back when he heard Carwood's laugh.

"What've you got there, Car?" he asked, and Carwood started walking over to him on unsteady kid-legs, but then he got distracted by another worm and picked it up, too, and then there were more, so he kept picking them up.

"What are these, papa?" he asked when he finally made it over to his papa, holding up an entire fistful of wriggling worms, smiling widely at the way his papa's expression was so gleeful.

"Those are called worms. They like it when it rains. Then, they can come out and dance," his papa explained.

"Wo'ms," Carwood repeated for his own benefit, but he was too little to properly pronounce the "r" in the word, and his papa laughed a little bit.

"Why don't you take those inside and go show your mama? I bet she'd love to see 'em." Carwood was too young then to realize that Papa had suggested doing so just to mess with Mama. He'd just been excited at the prospect of showing her his find, which surely she would be just as excited about as him.

He must've made quite the sight, stomping into their family's section of the boarding house, tracking mud after him, hands and face also smeared with mud, holding up a fistful of worms to his mother. Of course, she didn't see him immediately, as she was busy in the kitchen and hadn't turned around to look at him yet. And George wasn't around—he was probably napping.

"Mama, look! I found wo'ms!" He yelled at the top of his lungs, and then his mama did turn around, and she practically screeched, jumping at the sight of all the slimy worms Carwood held out in his fist.

"Carwood! Look at the mess you made! Take those gross worms outside," Mama said chastisingly.

Carwood was confused, and he stepped back a bit, a little hurt that Mama wasn't happy to see the worms. "Papa said to show you. He said you'd love to see the wo'ms."

"He did, did he?" Mama asked, putting her hands on her hips. Papa walked into the house then, and she leveled him with a flat glare. Papa was grinning a bit.

"Oh, yes. He was very excited to show them to you. It would be a shame to let him down, now," Papa said, and then Mama gave him another look that Carwood didn't quite understand before she sighed and knelt down to Carwood's level.

"Alright, Carwood. Show me the worms," Mama said, and when Carwood reflected on this moment once he got older, she truly put on a brave face when Carwood suddenly shoved his muddy, worm-filled fist two inches from her face.

"They are… they're just swell, Carwood. Can you take them back outside, now?" Mama asked. She had a smile on her face, but it looked a bit wobbly and not quite full.

"Okay! They can go dance in the rain again," Carwood said, and he toddled back out of their house. While Carwood made his way outside, he heard Mama telling Papa that he was going to clean up all the mud, and when Carwood went back into the house, it was apparently time for an early bath that Papa gave him instead of Mama like normal. The bathwater was brown in no time due to all the mud, but Carwood was beaming when Papa told him he'd had a lot of fun that day. Carwood had a lot of fun, too.

The next animal he found was probably around when he was 6. He and George were playing outside in their backyard, and then Carwood caught sight of what at first looked like a weird stick, so he went to pick it up, but then it moved, and he realized it was a snake, and then he realized it was heading for their chickens, so he ran on ahead of it and caught it right by its head, picking it up and looking at it, holding it with both hands since it was so long.

He'd thought that snakes would be scarier, but the fella in his arms didn't seem too scary. It had a neat little tongue that kept flicking in and out of its mouth.

He wanted to show it to George, but George had already run back inside the house, yelling for Mama and Papa.

They came out onto the porch real quick, Mama seeming worried, but Papa was just laughing as soon as he saw Carwood.

"Did you make a new friend, Carwood?" Papa asked, coming down the steps of the porch while Mama stayed back and George clung to her dress.

"Yeah! He was headin' toward the chickens, so I nabbed 'im," Carwood said, proudly holding the snake up to Papa so that he could see. Papa laughed again and turned back to Mama.

"You sure you don't want to see, darling?" He yelled.

"No! You and Carwood go take that snake somewhere I don't have to see it!" Mama replied, and George snuggled in a bit closer to her side.

So, Papa took Carwood on a nice, long walk through the woods behind their house. They traded off who was holding the snake, just so Carwood's arms wouldn't get tired.

"This here's a rat snake. That means if he bites you, you won't get sick. But Carwood, I need you to be careful around snakes, okay? Some of them can really hurt you and make you sick when they bite, so most of the time, unless you're sure, it's safer to leave them be, especially for a little boy like you," Papa said when it was his turn to hold the snake.

"Okay, Papa. But I'm not so little," Carwood said, a bit indignantly. He was bigger than George, after all, by quite a bit.

Papa chuckled. "You sure are to me. Knee-high to a grasshopper, you are. But you'll be a man in no time, I bet."

Finally, they reached a spot that Papa deemed far enough from their house, and they let the snake go. It slithered away from them as quickly as possible. Papa ruffled Carwood's hair a bit, and about halfway back, he started carrying Carwood, since Carwood had gotten pretty sleepy on the walk over. Carwood fell asleep in his papa's arms not long after.

When Carwood was 8, he found what he thought was a little puppy out in the woods behind their house.

He liked to go back there—not too far, at his mama's insistence—and mess around in the trees and the weeds, looking for bugs and little critters. George didn't like to go out there as much as Carwood, but he was younger, so it was okay that he was more afraid.

The puppy that Carwood found was dirty and all by its lonesome. It was shivering something fierce, and didn't even try to run from Carwood when he found it huddled up against a hollow in a tree. When he got closer, he saw that one of its front legs was hurt and bent at the wrong angle.

"Aw, poor little fella," Carwood said to it, slowly reaching out and grabbing it by the scruff of its neck. It shivered more, since it was fall and all, so Carwood held it closer to himself and tucked it into his jacket to share some of his body heat, and then he set off back towards the house, hoping his parents would let him keep the puppy, or at least help it out.

"I'm gonna call you Willis. There's this mean boy in school named Willis who says my name is like a dog name instead of a person name, so I'm gonna give you his name. Who's got a dog name now, Willis?" Carwood continued to speak to the puppy, hoping to soothe it. It did seem to relax into him, and as Carwood made it to their backyard, he sighed to himself. "But it's a bit mean of me to get back at him like that. Then I'd be bullying him back, and Papa says that's not right. And you're just a puppy. You don't need to be named after a bully. I'll call you Willy instead."

He walked up the back porch and into the house. "Mama! Papa! I found a puppy in the woods!" He yelled, and he was pretty sure he heard a quiet bad word before Mama came into the room. Carwood could hear George running down the hallway, probably excited to see the puppy.

"Papa's out front fixing up the gutters. Let's see the little fella, huh?" Mama said, and George came into the room.

"I wanna see it!" George exclaimed, and Carwood pulled the puppy out from his jacket.

George cooed at it, but Mama froze and then just looked a little tired as she sighed.

"Did you see any other animals like it while you were outside?" Mama asked slowly.

"No. He was all by himself, and he's just a puppy. See, his leg is hurt. Can we help him?" Carwood pointed to the broken leg.

Mama smiled at him fondly, and then shook her head. "Carwood, I think that's a coyote pup." George jumped back a bit as soon as she said it and hid behind her, peering around her as if he was afraid the pup was going to attack.

"Oh." Carwood said, looking down at the puppy. He sure didn't look much like a coyote, but apparently he was one. All he was doing right now was cuddling further into Carwood, though, and he didn't seem very violent. "But can't we help Willy, anyway?"

"You named it?" Mama audibly sighed yet again, but she still looked fond.

"I was hopin' I could convince you and Papa to let me keep 'im," Carwood muttered, looking down at the coyote pup and petting his head a bit. He was soft, and really, he couldn't understand what the big deal of at least helping him would be.

Mama was silent for a bit before standing back up. "Let me go get your papa."

George followed her closely as she walked to the front of the house, likely afraid to be in the same room as the coyote without her. Mama opened the front door and yelled out, "Clifford! Your son brought home a coyote pup!"

"What?!" Carwood heard his papa say, and Carwood smiled to himself. Papa was always a soft touch when it came to the critters Carwood found.

In the end, they did help Willy out, mostly because Carwood begged and begged and then threatened to throw a fit if they didn't at least help. Papa fashioned a splint for the pup with some wood and rope. It was crude, but it did the job. Willy stayed outside in Papa's workshop, but Carwood went out every day and night to bring him food and water and check on him, and he sure was just as affectionate toward him as a real dog would've been.

But Mama had seemed a bit bothered about it the whole time, and so one night, a few days after finding Willy, when Carwood should've been sleeping but couldn't because he was up worrying he'd made Mama upset, he snuck into his parents' bedroom. Papa was a hard sleeper and didn't stir at all when Carwood entered, but Mama woke up immediately, before Carwood even made it to her side of the bed.

"Carwood? What's wrong, honey?"

"I'm sorry if all the animals I find make you upset, Mama. I can be more careful about it, if you need," Carwood said without any preamble.

Mama seemed sleepy, but sat up straighter. "Oh, honey, I wouldn't want you to stop."

"But you always seem a little mad when I do it, and I don't want to make you mad, because then that'll make me sad," Carwood insisted.

Mama smiled at him, and Carwood knew he was loved just from that look alone, but even moreso when she pulled him into a hug.

"Honey, you finding all those animals and wanting to help them just means your heart's big. It's a good thing, having a big heart like that. It'll serve you well. Don't you ever stop doing what you do. It makes my heart bigger, watching you," Mama said. "I love you so big, Carwood."

"I love you so big, too, Mama." He pressed up against her, further into her hug, and then she kissed the top of his head and told him to get on back to sleep.

When Willy's leg was healed, they let him go back into the woods. He was old enough to be able to fend for himself, Papa said, but Carwood worried that maybe he'd never see Willy again.

He was wrong to be worried, though. Willy came by at least once a week, waiting by the edge of the backyard in the evenings sometimes, trotting over to Carwood and bumping against him in a way that clearly signified that he wanted some scratches on his head, which Carwood naturally provided. Willy would keep coming by periodically for years after that, and a year or so after they first found him, Willy came by with pups, and Carwood learned that Willy had been a female coyote the whole time. He told Mama that he felt a bit like a grandfather when he saw those pups, and she laughed so hard she nearly fell off her chair.

When Carwood was 10, only a few weeks before his life got turned on its head, some ducklings followed him and George home from a pond not too far from their house. The mama duck had been killed—Carwood steered George away from the messy feathers left behind so he wouldn't have to see, and he just hoped Willy hadn't been the one to do it—and the ducklings were left without anyone to take care of them. Luckily, George wasn't afraid of the ducklings, like he was with some of the other animals Carwood found.

Carwood didn't have to pick the ducklings up himself, either. They followed them back to their house, and when they marched up to the back door and showed their parents what they'd found, Papa had immediately said they'd build a nice little coop for them to live in, separate from the chickens since they'd probably fight, and Mama went out and got some more feed for them.

George didn't help much with the building of the new coop for the ducklings, and he went out with Mama to get the food, so it was down to Papa and Carwood to build it together. Papa had a workshop in the backyard, though, filled with wood and tools lying around for repairs to the house, whenever they were needed. It needed to be kept up for their boarders, after all. So, they had what they needed to build it on-hand already.

Papa taught Carwood all about how to take care of the ducklings, too. Well, he taught both Carwood and George, but George didn't seem as interested. He'd always been more inclined to stay inside and follow Mama around than to get his hands dirty, but that was alright, since Carwood could get his hands dirty enough for the both of them. Carwood got good at taking care of the ducklings, though, and he didn't really mind the work. He liked helping.

The ducklings would need some time to grow, and then they'd be able to release them back to the pond he and George had found them in. Carwood had planned it all out with Papa. The ducklings would grow up and then they'd graduate, like how a big kid graduated high school, and Carwood wanted the whole family to go down to the pond to see them off. Papa promised they would.

It had been raining all day and it was still raining in the evening. Carwood was outside in the rain, since there wasn't any lightning, watching the ducks splash around and looking for worms in the dirt to give them, a favorite hobby of his ever since the first time he did it when he was even smaller, although he never brought them inside or shoved them in Mama's face again. It was relaxing, and it took his mind off of the worry gnawing through his stomach, because Mama and Papa had gone out to the store at around noon and still weren't back, and it was past 6 in the evening and getting closer to sundown. They normally only took an hour or two at the store, max, and Carwood couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Before he went outside to play in the rain, he made himself and George sandwiches, and went and apologized to the boarders and told them that their dinner would be a little late because Mama and Papa were still at the store. The boarders being there were why it was fine to leave Carwood and George to themselves, since there were always adults around that they could go to if they every found themselves in a bind.

Carwood had left George inside by himself, probably curled up trying to read a book because that boy was only 7, almost 8, but he was sharp as a knife and a fast learner, and he loved to read, or at least look at the words on pages.

"Carwood!" a voice yelled from the back porch of the house, and it wasn't any of the boarder nor his parents nor his brother. Carwood turned back and saw Officer Washington standing under the awning so that the rain wouldn't get on him. That feeling in Carwood's stomach twisted even more upon seeing him, and he just knew something was wrong. He made his way back to the porch immediately, grabbing the towel he'd left out for himself since he knew he'd get all wet and Mama would get mad at him for tracking water and mud through the house if he didn't clean off first.

"What's wrong, sir?" Carwood asked, because he might've been young, but he knew that officers didn't make house visits unless something had happened. Sure, he'd met Officer Washington plenty of times before, but that was typically when he was in town with one of his parents, not in his own house.

Officer Washington took off his hat, and sighed. "It's your parents."

—

Papa was dead, and Mama was hurt.

Mama would survive, but she wouldn't be able to walk again. Carwood and George had gone to visit her in the hospital a few times, but they couldn't stay forever and had to go home. One of the boarders had taken over making meals for everyone, and they all took turns watching over the boys, since some of them were adults with kids of their owns. It was mighty nice of them, but it was Carwood's job to be the man of the house, and he knew he needed to pick up his slack. He knew just how things ought to be done in the house after years of watching his parents, and so he started taking care of things on his own. He made sure George got his baths, and that he also got his own baths, and that the chickens eggs were collected and the chickens and ducks were fed, and that George went to bed each night around 7 or 8 in the evening, although lately he'd been sleeping in Carwood's bed with him since Mama and Papa weren't there to provide him comfort. Carwood made the boarder who'd been cooking show him how to do it, and then he took over that, too.

Some neighbors kept bringing by meals, which made it easier to take care of things, as well, but it also made Carwood a little mad because he thought it meant they didn't think he could do it himself. He'd never voice a complaint, though, and so he just thanked them and fed who he could with the meals, and went out back when Willy showed up once a week or so and gave her some head scratches and scraps of their food. He even found where his parents kept their grocery money and, knowing he couldn't get himself to the store all alone, had a boarder take him there. He didn't much like riding in an automobile, not after knowing what had happened to Mama and Papa, but there was nothing to be done about it. He bought the groceries with the money he'd found, because he was good at his math class and knew how to add and had sat with Papa a few times while he counted things out and explained how it worked to Carwood, but he was a few cents short. The worker said not to worry about it, but Carwood never forgot how much he owed, and he walked himself back to the store a few days later with the last of the change that was needed to pay for their groceries.

It was during this time, while Carwood was taking care of the house and Mama was still at the hospital, that the ducklings were finally old enough to be released. George had lost all interest in them since the automobile accident, and was even more afraid than usual to go outside because he was worried about getting hurt like Mama and Papa did, so even though Papa had promised they'd all go as a family, Carwood went by himself. The ducklings were thrilled to have a whole pond to themselves, swimming away as soon as they saw it, and Carwood stood watching them for longer than he probably should've, since there was work to do at the house.

He hadn't let himself cry since he found out what happened. He had to be the man of the house, and Carwood knew from school that men didn't cry, and he had to be a good example for George, so he'd held on and promised himself he wouldn't cry. But he was all alone, now, and he wasn't supposed to be in this moment, and so he sat on the edge of the pond and let himself cry because there was no one there to nag at him for it. He'd pull himself together and get back to the house and make dinner for everyone later, but for just a little while, he let himself have this moment.

He wouldn't cry again for a long time.

When he got back to the house, he made dinner as he'd promised himself he would, and no one had an inkling that he'd cried at all, even though Carwood could still feel his cheeks tingling a bit from it and his throat still ached just slightly from when he'd let out some particularly embarrassing sounds while he cried.

After dinner, it was still light out, and Carwood made his way out to the backyard, staring at the little coop they'd made for the ducks. Now it was just extra wood, and he'd seen Mama the other day. She said she'd need a wheelchair, but it would be impossible for her to get up into the house in it; they only had stairs up the porch. So, Carwood took apart the last thing he'd made with his papa, and used the wood to build his mama a ramp to surprise her with when she came back. It was crude, but Carwood imagined Papa directing him on it, and it got easier as he went.

Mama had tears in her eyes when she finally got back and saw it, and Carwood felt proud and like a real man, and tried not to wonder if his poor ducklings were still alive out at the pond.

At age 12, it was George who found an animal, for once. He'd found a whole burrow of rabbits dug up by something (Carwood refused to admit that it could've been Willy or one of her pups who did it). They weren't too badly hurt, but they were clearly shaken, and George wanted to help them just like how his big brother always helped animals.

Carwood couldn't refuse him, but he also knew they couldn't afford to spare much food for the rabbits, nor could they afford to buy much food. They were in a "Depression," Mama said, which meant that money was tight, especially since they were still trying to recover from her hospital stay and Papa's funeral—even with the generosity of neighbors and the local church, it was a bit difficult to get by. Carwood knew far too much about finances for a 12 year old, but as soon as Mama had made it back, he'd made her teach him, and he'd been helping her with them for nearly 2 years at that point.

So, he knew they couldn't afford to take care of the rabbits, but he also didn't want to let his little brother down, because George was petting one of the poor little fella's heads and he looked so sad and hopeful and Carwood knew he had to do something to at least keep them safe.

He landed on getting some wood from Papa's workshop—it was sort of his now, since he was the only one who ever went inside, but it was still Papa's in spirit—and building a safe little fence around the rabbits' burrow. They could get out and get food—he built it with little exits to make sure of that—but nothing that would want to eat them could get in. George actually helped him build it, that's how invested he was in the rabbits.

But this was their first major animal find since Papa had died, and while George seemed plenty unbothered by it, Carwood couldn't help but think that Papa should've been there to help. He'd been there when Carwood first discovered worms, when he'd picked up the snake, when Willy had needed her leg set, when they built the coop for the ducklings. But he wasn't here now, and Mama couldn't come outside and see what they were messing with all that easily.

She'd taken to her injury gracefully, and 2 years out, was moving like a natural in the wheelchair, but she couldn't go out into the backyard or to anywhere else in town easily, and for the first few months had taken care of the house, George, and her as best as he could. She hadn't cried much either, but there had been one night that Carwood came downstairs from his bedroom to get a glass of water, and he'd heard Mama sniffling a bit in her room. He was worried she was getting sick, so he went in to check on her, but she wasn't sick, Carwood realized. She was sitting in her bed, and her shoulders were shuddering a bit and she had her face buried in her hands, and Carwood could hear quiet sobs drifting from her. At first, he didn't know what to do, because he'd never seen Mama cry before, but when he was really little and he got hurt and cried a bit, before he learned in school that boys weren't supposed to cry, Mama used to pull him into a hug and kiss his head and rub his back until everything felt better.

So, Carwood crawled onto Mama's bed, and she must not have noticed that he was there until then because she startled a bit when the mattress dipped. Before she could even speak, Carwood hugged her. He was too small to reach the top of her head, since he hadn't hit his growth-spurt yet, so he laid his own head on her shoulder and rubbed her back just the way she did. She didn't speak, her breath just hitched a bit more, and they stayed in that position for quite some time. Eventually Carwood pulled away, because her shoulders had stopped shuddering and she seemed to have stopped crying.

"My brave, brave boy," she said, and she smiled at him and cupped his face with one of her hands. "I love you so big, Car."

"I love you so big, too, Mama," Carwood replied, and he smiled up at her and felt his own tears threatening to well up, but he was real good at pushing them down, now, and so they didn't.

Still, Mama must have sensed it in him, because she pulled him into another hug and whispered in his ear, "I'm proud of you. Thank you for your help."

And Carwood smiled against her shoulder and eventually went back to bed feeling good about himself.

But back to the rabbits, where Carwood was now. Mama couldn't be there to see them take care of the rabbits. George had told her all about them and the fence they were building, but she couldn't go out and see them, and later Carwood reassured her that he'd figured it all out so that they wouldn't have to spend any extra money on the rabbits. Mama smiled, but Carwood thought the smile didn't quite reach her eyes, and he couldn't quite figure out why that was.

Really, taking care of random animals should've felt like a return to life before. But it felt like anything but that to Carwood, but he knew he had to be the man of the house and couldn't express those things, couldn't let his worries show to George and Mama because then he'd be incompetent, so he held it in.

It would be fine. It had to be fine, because he'd make it be fine, and he didn't trust anyone else to make it that way. It had to be him who fixed things. So it would be him. Really, Carwood showing George how to take care of the rabbits was just another way he was assuming one of Papa's roles. If anything, this meant he was ready and able to do what needed to be done, and he had been the last two years since he'd picked the broken threads of his family up and held them all together.

He'd bear the burden and he'd bear it with pride, as long as it meant his family would get on fine. And if taking care of those rabbits meant George would be happy, then that was alright by him, because George being happy made Mama happy and it made him happy, too. It had been a long time, Carwood realized, since he'd been happy like he used to before Papa died, but seeing George run after the baby bunnies, giggling and laughing as though he didn't have a care in the world, made it worth it. George shouldn't have a care in the world, after all; that was Carwood's job.

He'd do all the caring for the both of them.

There were several other animals that Carwood took in over the years. Cats, dogs, strays that needed someone to look after them before they moved on. He might be the man of the house, but he had a bleeding heart, and he found he really couldn't not help those poor animals, who always showed up looking so bedraggled and miserable. He couldn't fix everything in the world, but he could help these little fellas.

Still, a notable instance happened when he was 17 and about to finish high school.

He'd been taking care of things at the boarding house for 8 years at this point and had things down to a science. They'd even been able to save up for a new automobile, so it was easier for them to go to the store for what they needed once Carwood learned how to drive. George had started picking things up and helping when he got older, too, and Carwood didn't try to refuse his help because he'd run himself into the ground as a 10 year old and didn't think he would ever recover.

He didn't have too many close friends at school, either. Nobody disliked him, but he couldn't claim to have specific people with whom he often spent time. He'd always been so busy with the boarding house that he didn't give himself much time for friends. Mama got onto him about it, but it was easier that way. It was hard enough to trust George to get some of the things done around the house just because he was so used to doing it himself. Mama did stuff, too, steady and capable as she was, but still Carwood had a tendency to check over everything twice and then thrice to make sure everything was as it should be. This he could control; this he could handle. So, he didn't have a chance to make close friends, in spite of other people's efforts to get him to go out with them and have fun just this once. He couldn't; he had work to do.

In spite of his best efforts to go to school and then go straight home to take care of things, though, he would always be a sucker for those damn animals, and so when he saw some kids in his grade gathered around something only a little ways out from the school and heard their surprised shrieks, he had a feeling it was something living that had them reacting like that.

He approached them quietly, but had no problem speaking up. "What's going on?"

The students turned to look at him and seemed pretty surprised to see him, which was fair, since he always had some excuse to avoid hanging out with them after school.

"We found some possums," his classmate Jill said. She was newer than the rest of them, the only one of them who hadn't lived in Huntington her entire life; her family had only moved there a few years ago. "Baby ones."

"Can I see?" Carwood asked, and the circle parted a bit to make room for him. And there they were: a whole group of baby opossums, clearly having been trying to hide in their little hole in the ground under this tree and afraid of the gaggle of teenagers that towered over them.

"They don't got a mama possum anywhere nearby." That was said by Oliver; back before Carwood's papa had died, they'd been pretty tight friends, but Carwood had drifted away when things at home became too busy, and he'd pushed Oliver away a bit in spite of the boy's best efforts to to stay friends with him. It was easier, that way, and then, if anything ever happened to Oliver, it wouldn't hurt as much. Safer, too, since Carwood had realized a few years back that he thought boys were just as attractive as girls, if not moreso.

"You sure?" Carwood asked.

"Well," said Henry, the grocer's son, "I saw a dead possum on the road on the way here this morning."

Carwood just sighed. "Well, someone's gotta help these fellas."

"You sure we shouldn't just leave them here?" Annie asked. Her papa was Officer Washington, who'd been the one to give Carwood the news about his parents all those years ago.

"I can take 'em," Carwood said, stooping down to pick them up.

"They've been running away from us whenever we tried to touch 'em," Oliver warned. But the possums didn't try scurrying away from Carwood, who moved slowly to make sure not to startle them.

"Well, shit, Carwood, you some kind of animal whisperer?" Henry asked, laughing a bit as Carwood picked one of the possums up easily. It squirmed a bit, and then climbed up onto his shoulder.

"I like animals," Carwood said, picking up another possum and putting it on his other shoulder. "Had a pet coyote for years."

"What?" Annie asked with a laugh, and Jill and Henry seemed similarly incredulous.

"Oh, I remember that. She still around?" Oliver had been over once or twice on the evenings Willy would stop by for a visit.

Carwood shook his head, jostling the possums on his shoulders. "I don't think so. Haven't seen her in a long time."

"That's a shame. I've never seen such a tame coyote," Oliver whistled. "You can't carry all those little guys; give some of them to me."

And so, between the five of them, they figured out how to transport the 8 baby possums, Carwood, Oliver, and Jill each carrying two, and Henry and Annie each carrying one. Carwood would've found a way to carry them all, but he had to admit that it was easier to do with other people, especially since he walked to school instead of driving to save on gas money.

"You sure these guys don't have diseases or anything?" Henry asked, surprisingly the most squeamish of them all about carrying them.

"Nah, they don't. I think they eat ticks, though, so they do us all a favor," Carwood replied, because he did like to read books on animals in the library whenever he actually found the time. "We can take them back to my house, put 'em in the workshop until I can make something for them to stay in."

So, they set off, and it was… weird, Carwood thought, to have classmates tag along with him after school.

Carwood didn't speak much on the way back, didn't see a point in doing so, but the others were content to carry on conversation around them, and Carwood laughed with them when one of Oliver's possums crawled up onto his head. It was easy to do, and it felt real.

They made it back to Carwood's house, but the easiest way to get to the backyard was through the house, which meant they'd have to take the possums inside briefly. One of the possums had stayed on his shoulder the whole time, but the other possum had seemed to feel more secure in his arms, so he adjusted his hold on it and opened the front door, holding it open for his friends. Oliver went through first, since he was the only one of them who'd actually been there before in all these years.

"Hi, Mrs. Lipton!" Carwood heard Oliver say as he walked inside.

"Oh, Oliver! What a lovely surprise! In many ways—just why do you have possums?" Mama seemed happy, and there was a hint of laughter in her tone as she spoke. Carwood made his way inside behind the rest of them and grinned sheepishly when he made eye contact with Mama, her hands resting on her hips.

"Carwood, did you drag these kids into another one of your animal rescues?" Mama asked sternly, but he could see she was fighting back a smile.

"Does he do this often?" Annie asked.

"At least once per year, I'd say," Mama said with an exaggerated sigh, but then she fully smiled. "It's nice to see you, Annie, and you, too, Henry. And who's this young lady?"

"That's Jill. She's only been here for about 3 and a half years," Carwood supplied. "We were gonna take the possums to the workshop."

"Well, you go do that, and then you all need to come back inside for some cookies," Mama said.

Carwood's eyebrows nearly rose to his hairline—when had Mama gotten the ingredients to make cookies?—but he knew his manners and knew not to question it in front of guests, so he didn't.

Carwood led his classmates out to the workshop. George was already home and in the backyard. He was a more social kid than Carwood was, something Carwood was grateful for, but George still liked to read more than he liked to do his homework and hang out with buddies, so typically he'd get home and hole himself away somewhere no one would bother him for a little while before going out to have fun with friends and eventually doing his homework. He didn't seem to like hanging out with Carwood too much any more, though, which made him a little sad, but Carwood had to admit that he'd been raising the kid for nearly half of his life, so maybe that made it difficult to be his friend on top of it all, too.

George looked up and saw Carwood and his gaggle of classmates and possums, and rolled his eyes in the indignant way teenage boys did.

"Jesus, Carwood, again?"

"I've never had possums before," Carwood retorted with a smile. George shook his head, but he was smiling, too, and came over to see them and help out, because he had gotten less afraid of the random animals Carwood would find as time went on.

"Least it's not another coyote," George muttered.

"Again with the coyote," Jill whispered to Henry, who chortled a little bit.

After they set up the possums in the workshop, and Carwood got them some water and food he figured they would eat—he'd have to go to the library and see if they had any information on what possums needed—he and George and his classmates went back into the house, where Mama had fresh cookies waiting for them.

"You're a miracle worker, Mrs. Lipton," Henry said, winking at her as he took a bite.

"You flatterer. You should come by more often," Mama said, and she smiled at them all and seemed content. "All you kids should."

Carwood opened his mouth to say that he had work to do so they wouldn't be able to come by often, but Oliver cut in before he could even speak.

"Oh, we will be. We'll have to check on our children, anyway," he said with a smirk. Carwood gaped at him a bit, and then the others were agreeing, and Carwood gaped a bit more.

They left eventually, and Carwood saw them out the front door. Henry and Oliver planned to walk the girls back, but Oliver stayed back on the front porch with Carwood for a moment before following them.

"Listen, Carwood, you pushed me away once years ago. I'm not letting you do it again. You're stuck with me," Oliver said, and all Carwood could do was nod a little dumbly while Oliver pulled him into a hug. Carwood went to bed that night thinking about that hug, feeling heat burning through him, so he took a cold shower to shock it out of his system and pushed all inappropriate thoughts aside.

And they did come by after school nearly every day after that. For the rest of their senior year, the group was inseparable. They came by to check on the possums, to do homework, to help Carwood with his chores so that he'd have free time for once in his life. He'd been resistant at first, but was too polite to outright say that he didn't want their company, and then they kept coming by, and eventually Carwood found himself missing them if there was a day they didn't pop by after school. And most of all, it clearly made Mama happy to see them, and she'd look at him so happy after they went home, and he wondered if she'd been worried about him not having friends.

It really was nice, Carwood thought, to have friends.

Chapter Text

At 22, Carwood joined the paratroopers. It sounded exciting, and he'd lived so much of his life stuck in his house that he was itching for something new. Sure, it had been self-imposed isolation from his own sense of duty, but once he'd made friends again, he realized just how lonely he'd been, and how much he yearned for something more.

The paratroopers were something new and exciting, just what he needed. He'd wanted to join the Air Corps, to follow Oliver as he had ever since he wormed his way back into his life at 17. But after a brief stint at college that failed due to financial difficulties, Carwood had worked at a factory and had gotten a bit of nickel in his eyes—his vision was not good enough for the Air Corps.

Oliver shipped out before Carwood left for training. And while Annie had always her eyes set on Carwood for a romantic partner since they'd become closer friends, Carwood never had eyes for her. He'd thought he was hopeless, that Oliver could never feel for him what he felt for Oliver.

But then, the night before Oliver shipped out, he came over to visit Carwood. Up in Carwood's bedroom, Oliver gave him a gift: a kiss. It was brief, and chaste, but it filled Carwood with such a thrill that he knew he'd throw the whole world aside if it meant he got to experience it again. That his feelings were not unrequited, that Oliver was sure enough that his own feelings were reciprocated that he felt he could do this—Carwood could hardly believe it. But it was his reality, and he was ecstatic. He just wished they'd figured themselves out earlier so they'd have more time together.

Oliver winked at him after, and promised more when he returned, when they both returned, and then he left.

Carwood shipped out not long after. He felt bad about leaving Mama on her own, with George also shipping out with the Marines, but she'd encouraged him to do it. At the train station before he left, she'd given him a hug, called him her brave boy, and told him that she loved him so big, just like they'd always done, and then she added that she was so proud of him, and Carwood felt a lump in his throat, but he didn’t cry. He wouldn't.

He'd never really left Huntington—well, it was right next to Ohio and Kentucky, and not too far from the city Charleston, so he'd been to those places, but only briefly—and Georgia was quite a bit hotter than what he was used to. He figured he'd adapt soon enough, but even just getting off the train, he was sweating like a dog.

He and all of Easy company settled into a routine pretty quickly, and that routine was to get worked down to the bone by Sobel, and then to have their weekend passes revoked for the minor infraction by him, too. They needed the training, Carwood knew, and he knew it would help keep them alive. But dammit, some of the infractions they were dinged for were clearly nonsensical. Still, Carwood knew it was important to follow orders and do what they had to; it would keep them all alive.

So he did, and he did his best to make sure that he wouldn't be the reason they got punished again—that damn thread on his sergeant's chevrons was ridiculous. He knew better than to do anything outlandish. And he certainly knew better than to do anything wild with animals out here of all places

But unfortunately, he was still the bleeding heart he'd always been, and when he was walking back to their tents after dinner at the mess one day and thought he heard a soft mew, he couldn't help but go check it out.

He'd been walking with Luz, Toye, and Guarnere when he heard it, and it stopped him in his tracks. The others kept walking, but stopped when they noticed he was no longer keeping pace with them.

"Lip, what's up?" Luz asked.

"I thought I heard…" Carwood began, and then he heard it again, and he knew he wasn't imagining things. It was coming from behind a tree—odd, how many things he found around trees—and immediately set off toward it. He heard the sounds of the other three following him, but he paid them no mind, not when he rounded the tree and found the most miserable little kitten he'd ever seen. It was a calico kitten, although it had more black and white than orange. It wasn't a newborn, but it was definitely too little to be on its own, but there were no other cats in sight, and he knew most mama cats came running at the sound of their little ones in distress. The poor thing's eyes were a bit crusted over, and it was shaking like a leaf even in the Georgia heat.

"Lip, what are you doing?" Guarnere asked. The other three clearly hadn't seen the kitten yet, so Carwood reached out and picked it up, cradling it in his arms a bit. He turned to show the other three. Their eyes widened and Luz burst out laughing.

"Jesus, Lip, do you mother anything that moves?" He asked, a bit incredulous.

Carwood shrugged and smiled a bit. "I've had a few pets. This one needs some water."

"You can't bring that back to the tents! Sobel'll kill you, and then us!" Toye said, shaking his head incredulously.

"And just leave it here to die?" Carwood countered, and then he set back off toward the tents before any of the others could argue.

They all jogged a bit to catch up with him.

"C'mon, Lip, you're not gonna keep it, are you?" Guarnere tried grabbing Carwood's shoulder as he said it, but Carwood shrugged him off.

"No, probably not. But I can help it. We have a little free time right now."

And so, they made it back to their tent, completely unsuccessful in trying to convince Carwood to not help the kitten. He got to his bunk and grabbed his canteen, pouring some of the water onto the kitten's face to clean its crusted eyes. It mewed miserably while he did it, and he just shushed it softly.

"You big softie," Luz muttered, and Toye and Guarnere chuckled at it.

Carwood looked up and rolled his eyes at them. He was about to reply when the flap of the tent opened and in walked none other than Lieutenant Winters himself, accompanied by Lieutenant Nixon as always. He wondered why they'd come to their tent—the officers didn't often mingle with enlisted men in their own tents.

"Sir!" The other three immediately saluted, but Carwood floundered a bit due to the squirming kitten currently held in his hands.

"At ease," Winters said before Carwood could even manage to set the kitten down, sounding a bit bemused. "Sergeant Lipton, just what do you have there?"

"A kitten. Sir," Carwood replied, tacking on the sir a bit belatedly. Nixon snorted.

"Why?" Winters asked.

"Well, sir," Carwood began, "I heard it behind a tree, and it was all by itself and looked like it needed help, so I figured I would do what I could to lend a hand."

Winters' mouth quirked up, and he exchanged a look with Nixon. "You're a good man, sergeant. But I don't want Sobel to catch you with it. That could be a mess. See to it that the kitten makes it out of the camp, somehow? Or at least out of your tent."

"Yes, sir," Carwood agreed, and then Winters and Nixon left. The other three broke into laughter as soon as they were gone while Carwood looked down at the kitten and sighed. He scratched its soft little head and it leaned into his touch.

"What am I going to do with you, huh?" He asked to no one in particular.

"Maybe you could bring it into town next time we have a weekend pass—you know, assuming it doesn't get revoked—and see if anyone there wants to take it in?" Toye suggested.

"Maybe," Carwood agreed, although who knew when that would be. And right now, it really was too small to be left outside to fend for itself.

In the end, Carwood came to the conclusion that he couldn't abandon the kitten just yet. Sobel had a tendency to raid their things, though, and he didn't want to be the reason they all got punished, or hell, he didn't want to get kicked out of the Airborne because of it. So, he had to get creative. All their cots were up against the walls of the tent, so he cut the fabric of it just slightly at the bottom, and dug a little hole in the grass for the kitten to stay in—the poor little fella really wasn't prone to wandering, seemed too frightened to want to go far. The fabric hardly looked any more worn than it had before, and no attention was drawn to it in case Sobel decided to do one of his little inspections. Then, at night, Carwood could sneak the kitten back into the tent and take care of it, and he let it sleep in his cot with him, since it always seemed to be shivering. The other fellas teased him about it, but not one of them ratted him out.

There was a close call once, though, where Sobel barged in on them when Carwood was feeding the kitten some of the scraps of his supper that he brought back with him from the mess. The kitten was sitting on his lap, purring up a storm, when Sobel entered and called them all to attention. Carwood's bed was further back, luckily, so Sobel couldn't immediately see what he was doing, but the most Carwood could manage regarding hiding the kitten was to hold it behind his back and pray it wouldn't squirm and meow too much. It was a vocal fella, after all.

And meow it did. Sobel was giving them all a dressing down that Carwood was only half-listening to due to the fear running through his veins right then, and right when Sobel took a pause to breathe, the kitten meowed. It was very soft, though, but it was clear that Sobel heard it, because he paused and looked a bit confused. Carwood worried that he was going to demand that they all give up where the cat was, but when Sobel continued on, he realized that he didn't know the kitten was inside the tent. And luckily, Sobel never noticed. He was out before Carwood was discovered. As soon as Sobel was gone, Carwood released a shaky breath, and the others patted him on the shoulders and told him it really had been a close call.

"I haven't named you yet," Carwood told the kitten, "but I think I'm gonna call you Lucky." Lucky meowed and purred, and Carwood grinned.

Lucky only stayed with him for another week or so before they finally had a weekend pass that didn't get revoked. Carwood brought Lucky out of the base with him, and while all the other boys were out at a bar or trying to woo the local women, Carwood wandered around Toccoa trying to find somewhere that would take the kitten, to not much avail. It seemed that hardly anyone wanted a kitten, and Carwood didn't want to leave her with the folks who said they'd just keep her outside. She was still little and couldn't fend for herself yet; she needed help.

He sat on the steps outside of some random building, elbows on his knees and Lucky leaning up next to him, purring and very pleased, and Carwood felt sad that he had to say goodbye at all, but he knew they'd move on from Georgia eventually and he definitely could not take her with him, as much as he wanted to.

Carwood didn't expect to see any other soldiers out in this part of town—most of them tended to stick to where the bars were or the movie theater was, and he was in a residential area—so he was quite startled when he heard a voice say "Sergeant."

He jumped a bit and looked up to find a lieutenant crossing the street over toward him. He wasn't from Easy, so Carwood honestly didn't know his name even if he'd seen glimpses of him around once in a while, but he was a lieutenant either way, so Carwood jumped up and saluted, startling poor Lucky. "Sir!"

"At ease. Name, Sergeant?" The lieutenant asked. Now that he was closer, Carwood got a good look at him. He had sharp features and intelligent green eyes—he was a handsome man, Carwood had to admit—but he was impossible to read. He relaxed from his salute, but there was still a bit of tension in his shoulders.

"Sergeant Lipton, sir. Easy Company."

"Ah, so Captain Sobel did not revoke your weekend passes for once," The lieutenant observed, and there was a bit of mirth in his eyes.

"No, sir," Carwood said, and then he grimaced a bit. "I'm sorry, sir, I can't remember your name."

"Speirs. Dog Company. What are you doing all the way out here by yourself?"

"Well, sir, I'm trying to find a home for this kitten." Carwood knew better than to ask what the lieutenant was doing out here all by himself, so he didn't. Instead, he just stooped over and picked up Lucky again.

Speirs' expression did not change in the slightest. He remained neutral as he observed the kitten in Carwood's arms, and then nodded to himself. "I might know a place. Come with me, Sergeant Lipton."

Carwood was damn good at following orders, so he didn't even question it, although he did begin to wonder what he'd gotten himself into when Speirs led him down a somewhat sketchy alley and knocked on a door.

It opened to reveal an older man who was missing an arm and had a long scar on his chin. The man looked old enough to have fought in the first world war, and Carwood was willing to bet that's what had earned him his wounds.

"I believe you mentioned you wanted a cat a few weekends ago," Speirs said to the man without preamble.

"Goodness, Lieutenant, that must have been a few months ago," The man said, laughing to himself, and then he saw Carwood and Lucky, and his expression softened. Carwood knew this man could be trusted with Lucky immediately based off of that expression alone.

"Her name is Lucky," Carwood said, "or at least, I think she's a she. I never can tell with cats very well."

The man held his hand out, and Lucky, still so incredibly small, fit practically in the palm of his hand. His face lit up, and he brought her closer to his chest. She purred and snuggled in immediately.

"Thank you. You boys stay safe," The man said, and he and Speirs nodded at each other, and just like that, the door was closed and Carwood and Speirs were alone in the alley.

Carwood knew it wasn't his place to ask the lieutenant what the hell had just happened, and Speirs didn't seem to be much of a talker. They walked in silence, and Speirs didn't seem keen to break it, so Carwood wouldn't either. It should have felt stiff, given the fact that this was their first ever meeting, but it didn't.

It wasn't until they were both almost back the main part of the town, where the rest of the boys were probably living it up, that Carwood finally felt the need to speak. "Thank you, sir. I was beginning to think that I wouldn't be able to find anywhere safe for her."

Speirs flashed him a quick smile, full of teeth and a bit reminiscent of a coyote's grin. The look was gone quickly, though, and his expression was blank as he replied. "Yes. At least now you won't have to worry about hiding her from Captain Sobel anymore."

Carwood froze. "Sir?" An officer from another company might have noticed Carwood's unique little piece of contraband, which did not bode well for him.

Speirs laughed a bit, although it was a stilted sound as if he wasn't used to laughing very much. "I notice things, Sergeant Lipton, although I'm certain few others do. You needn't worry, though. You aren't one of my men, so what you do is of no concern to me."

The message was clear: Lieutenant Speirs wouldn't rat him out, either. Carwood couldn't help but smile at him as he said, "Thank you, sir."

They made it to a bar where they could hear raucous laughter inside, the familiar joyful voices of some of Easy's men sounding like music to Carwood's ears. Speirs stopped at the entrance while Carwood kept going forward.

"Are you going to join us, sir?" He asked.

Speirs shook his head. "No, go on without me. I think I'll continue my walk through town."

It was clearly a dismissal, so Carwood smiled at him and thanked him again before he went inside. He tried to blame the fuzzy, warm feeling in his stomach on the one beer the men managed to get into him, but he knew he was only fooling himself.

In North Carolina, after they got their jump wings, Carwood promised himself he wouldn't go around finding animals. This time, though, some animals found him, in the form of a family of raccoons. There were two bigger, adult raccoons, and a couple of incredibly tiny baby raccoons who he saw get shoved away from the trash cans behind the mess hall by the cooks after supper. He froze in his spot, because as much as he wanted to go over and check on them, he knew it wouldn't end well for him if he got attached. Of course, the raccoons were unperturbed by the other humans physically shoving them away, and they scurried away, and started heading in a different direction. They were heading towards the woods at first, until one of the baby raccoons got all turned around and headed in the opposite direction, right toward Carwood.

He didn't move, not even when it crawled up his pant leg and all the way up his body onto his shoulder. It reminded him a bit of the possums from all those years ago, and that reminded him of Oliver, and he wondered idly how Oliver was doing, and if he thought about their last shared moment together as often as Carwood did.

Of course, with one of the raccoon kits with Carwood, the others turned and took notice, and soon practically the entire family of raccoons was crawling over him, looking for scraps. He didn't really know what to do about it, at first, but no one else was around, so he figured he could spare a few moments to guide the raccoons over to the woods. While he passed the back of the mess, he dug up some scraps leftover from supper, and distributed them to the raccoons once he was far enough into the woods.

He should have known better than to do that, of course, because then the next day, at evening, he looked out into the woods and saw those eyes peering at him through the trees. Sighing to himself, he snuck around the back of the mess and grabbed some scraps again before taking it out to the raccoons. They crawled all over him again, and he smiled a bit to himself. It was a nice reprieve from the daily stressors of their training, of worrying whether or not Sobel was going to be able to lead them into war or if he'd just be an empty uniform.

It became a routine for Carwood to pick up some scraps of food after supper and bring them out to the raccoons. No one had caught on yet, surprisingly enough, or maybe they had and didn't really care to find out why Carwood kept digging through the trash after supper. Or at least, Carwood thought no one had noticed him, until one night he went back there and found Lieutenant Speirs leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette and looking mighty bored. He shouldn't have been surprised; the last time they'd interacted, Speirs made it very clear that few things escaped his notice.

"Sergeant Lipton," Speirs greeted in a flat tone, and there was something predatory in his eyes, for sure, but Carwood had adopted a coyote as a kid and wasn't scared in the slightest.

"Lieutenant Speirs," Carwood said, stopping short of the garbage can he'd normally pull some scraps from. He could see the eyes of his little family of raccoons peering from the woods, knew they were waiting on him, but he didn't want to steal food in front of the lieutenant.

"You come out back here every night and steal scraps of food and go off into the woods. What are you up to, Lipton?" Speirs drawled a bit, but there was just the hint of an accent beneath his words, like he was purposefully trying to tamp down on it and make himself sound different.

Carwood didn't see a point in lying to the lieutenant, especially since it was evident from what he'd said that he'd been watching Carwood for at least a few nights. "There's a family of raccoons out in the woods that I feed, sir. I figure it's better to bring food to them so that they stay out of the camp, sir."

Speirs' expression didn't change at all aside from the slight quirk of an eyebrow. "That so? Grab some food and take me to them."

Carwood shrugged and did as he was ordered. The raccoon family was all over him the instant he made it into the woods, Speirs trailing just a few feet behind him. Carwood thought he heard a surprised sound from him when the raccoons started crawling up Carwood's pants, but when he turned to face the lieutenant, his expression was blank as ever.

"Do you often take in animals like this, sergeant?" Speirs asked idly, lifting his eyebrow again as one of the raccoons made its way up to sit on top of Carwood's head.

"I did back home," Carwood replied. He wasn't quite sure why this lieutenant from another company seemed to take an interest in him, but it wasn't his place to ask questions.

"And where is that?" Speirs asked. "Home, I mean."

"Huntington, West Virginia. My whole life," Carwood replied. And, feeling a little bold, he continued. "Where are you from, sir?"

"Boston," Speirs replied immediately, and then he seemed surprised at his own response, but he kept going, anyway. "Well, Scotland originally. But we moved to Boston when I was a young child."

"You don't sound like it," Carwood said before he could think better of it, and then his eyes widened. "Sorry, sir, that was an overstep."

But Speirs flashed him that quick, coyote-like grin again. "Don't worry about it, sergeant." He paused for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face, before he continued speaking. "Most people back home would've looked at these guys and thought they were pests."

"The fellas working the mess did, too. But they can't help how they are, and it's our fault we're in their home, anyway. I figure I can help them out a little bit—we sure ain't gonna use those leftovers, after all," Carwood said. Speirs hummed thoughtfully, but didn't reply.

One of the raccoon kits marched right over to Speirs, and then started crawling up his pant leg before the man could even react. Speirs stiffened, back ramrod straight and hands curled into fists at his side while the raccoon made its way up to his shoulders. For once, the man seemed unsure, his eyes a bit wide, and Carwood couldn't help but smile at the way he stood practically frozen in place.

"You can move, you know. You aren't gonna knock the little guy down, and even if you do, it'll be fine," Carwood said. "They're sweet."

Speirs schooled his expression as soon as Carwood spoke, as if he'd just remembered that he wasn't alone, and slowly but surely, he relaxed, first his hands and then his tense shoulders.

"Have you ever taken care of raccoons before, Lipton?" Speirs asked, and although he was relaxed, he was still standing kind of stiffly.

"No. Closest thing was a family of possums back home that me and some friends from high school rescued."

"A guy like you probably had a lot of friends," said Speirs, and Carwood couldn't help but wonder just what he meant by that comment, or why he felt it was necessary to say in the first place. Still, Carwood was not in the habit of lying to superior officers.

"Not really, sir. Only a few. I was always busy at home or with schoolwork."

Speirs seemed surprised, and then he nodded thoughtfully. "I don't—didn't—have many friends, either."

This was probably the most bizarre conversation Carwood had ever had with a superior officer, and he didn't know exactly how to respond. So, he went with his gut and walked forward to pluck the raccoon kit off of Speirs' shoulder. The lieutenant visibly relaxed when he did so, and then they were standing a tad too close for a superior officer and NCO.

"Well, sir," Carwood said, gently placing the raccoons that were crawling all over him on the ground, "I suppose we'll just have to call each other a friend, then."

Speirs seemed surprised, and Carwood worried again that he'd overstepped, but then Speirs smiled a bit, shyer than his usual coyote grin, and nodded. "Alright, Lipton." And then he whirled on his feet and stalked out of the woods without so much as a goodbye, but Carwood didn't take offense. That's just how his friend Lieutenant Speirs was.

There were a few instances of animal run-ins in Aldbourne. The first of these occurred after Luz tricked Sobel into cutting the fence, and the cows got out. They had to round up the cows and try to get them back to the poor farmer, and they ended up mostly being Carwood, because the cows all seemed to follow him around over anyone else.

"You some kind of animal-whisperer, Lip?" Bull asked, cigar held firmly in his mouth, Martin snickering at his side.

"I like animals," Carwood replied, laughing a bit as one surly cow shoved its nose right into his side. Henry had said those exact same words to him when they found the possums, and Carwood had replied in the same way. He wondered how Henry was doing; he'd gotten into a factory accident that had screwed up his leg a bit, so he was 4F and wasn't able to join the military, but he'd seemed pretty determined to do whatever he could to help the war effort elsewhere. He and Jill had gotten together, and had a kid on the way before Carwood left. Enough time had passed, he bet the kid had been born. He decided he should write and ask after them when he got a chance.

The cows went back to their rightful owner eventually, after practically following Carwood around all day until they found the right place to go. Guarnere called him "Cow-wood" for about a day, but it didn't roll off the tongue too well so the nickname thankfully didn't stick.

There was another animal encounter just a day or two later, when Carwood ran into a magpie who seemed to be stuck in some mud on the ground. The bird cawed at him incessantly, but Carwood held his hands out in front of him and snuck forward to snatch it out of the mud. The poor thing's feathers were too dirty to try to fly anywhere, so Carwood grabbed his canteen and began washing it off. The bird was surprisingly obedient, although it looked pissed off, but it seemed to be smart enough to know that Carwood was just there to help.

But perhaps it wasn't smart enough to not jump right back into the mud, as it attempted to as soon as Carwood seemed to be done washing it off. He caught it again before it could make it, but it seemed to be insistent on going back to the mud.

"Did you lose something in there?" Carwood asked, and then he stooped down and sifted through the mud a bit, ignoring the mess it was making of his free hand—the other occupied with the magpie—until he found a piece of metal. The magpie squawked, and Carwood moved away from the mud and used the rest of his water to rinse off the metal. It was a shiny, silver ring, and the bird squawked in delight before plucking it out of Carwood's hand and flying away. Carwood couldn't help but laugh to himself, and he continued on to where he was being quartered.

It was at this house, a few days later, that Carwood saw that he'd gotten a letter from Mama. He was excited to hear an update from home, and as soon as he got to his bed and set his things down, he sat down and opened it, ignoring the voices of the other boys quartered in the house as they argued about this and that.

It started out innocent enough, a bit of this and that and gossip about their neighbors or boarders, but then Carwood kept reading and he felt his stomach drop as if he was jumping out of an airplane right then.

And I'm sorry to have to change the tone of the letter, but I thought you'd want to know. Your friend Oliver's plane crashed into the ocean during one of his flights. He died a hero, drawing enemy fire—

Carwood couldn't finish the letter. His eyes were blurring with tears. But he sniffed and wiped at them, because he really was a man now and men didn't cry. But still, he couldn't finish that letter, knowing it would just be Mama expressing her condolences and telling him to stay safe.

He was glad none of the other boys were in the room with him. It was supper time, and the family they were quartered with liked to feed them, but Carwood didn't think he could stomach much of anything right then anyway. He snuck out of the house before anyone could notice him, and walked aimlessly through the streets.

He wasn't sure where to go, or what to do, because Oliver was dead, and that just didn't seem right. They were supposed to be something to each other. They were supposed to meet up after the war, and Carwood would get more than just that chaste kiss that he'd yearned for since the instant Oliver had declared he was back in Carwood's life for good when they were 17. But they'd never get that, and Carwood couldn't imagine himself with anyone else, and his brain was buzzing with the grief that he wouldn't let out.

He ended up in the middle of a park. He didn't remember how he got there, and he was sure it would take him quite some time to find his way back to his quarters, and the boys would've definitely noticed he was gone by now, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. It was at this park that he found a lost badger, just sitting in the middle of a field.

Carwood seemed to find little fellas whose parents had met a sad fate, because the poor badger was young but there was no mama badger in sight. Carwood wondered if he kept finding these animals because they were just like him, with a sad early start to life. He wondered if he'd sealed his fate the moment he took Willy in when he was 8. Either way, it seemed like fate, finding it here, and the little guy seemed scared. Carwood could relate. He stuffed the letter that he hadn't realized he was still clutching into his pocket, and inched toward the badger, wary of its limits, but wanting to give it the comfort he so desperately craved himself.

English badgers were a hell of a lot nicer than American ones, or maybe this one was just particularly tame, because it scuttled into his arms without putting up much of a fight.

"There you are, little guy," Carwood said, scratching its head. They really were just two peas in a pod; alone, and seeking comfort where they could. This was familiar. Carwood couldn't control the war, but he could help out this little animal. But the thought reminded him that he'd taken in all those animals as a bid to push away human friends, and he'd pushed Oliver away for 7 years, and if he'd just gotten his head out of his ass a little sooner, they would've had more time together. Carwood felt the tears coming again, and he figured that since he was alone, there was no need to stop them. Still, they fell silently, mostly because he didn't think Oliver would like the idea of Carwood having a breakdown over him. Selfishly, Carwood couldn't help but wonder if he'd been anywhere in Oliver's thoughts in his last moment, but he cursed himself and pushed the thought away. There was no use in speculating, no use on dwelling on what-ifs. That didn't make it easy to push them away, though.

Carwood wasn't sure how long he sat in the park, cradling the little badger who seemed content to stay with him, but it had been dusk when he'd left and it was full-dark now, and he was thankful it was one of their rare free nights. He was glad he could afford a little time to fall apart. He'd pull himself back together again, and he'd go back to the boys and tell them he just needed to go for a walk, and they'd be none the wiser to his grief. He couldn't let them see; he had to remain strong, for them, because he couldn't control them but he could control himself. It was just what he'd done for his family after the accident. Carwood could and would do it again.

After a little while, there was a noise on the edge of the clearing Carwood and the badger sat in. He hadn't seen another soul around the whole night, and he was curious, but then he saw a larger badger ambling toward them. The small badger in his lap made a silly noise, and then crawled away from him toward the larger one, and Carwood couldn't help but smile at seeing the two reunited. The large badger paid him no heed, and the small one glanced back at him one last time before the two disappeared out of the clearing, and then he was well and truly alone. Carwood missed the warmth of the small badger, but he was glad it still had a mama or papa or however badgers worked to take care of it.

He moved to sit up, but then there was a squawk in the distance, and all of a sudden a familiar magpie landed on his knee.

"Oh," Carwood said, and he laughed a bit. "Hello again."

The bird made an odd sound, and it had something in its beak. It pushed its beak against Carwood until he held a hand out, and then it placed whatever it had in its beak into his hand—a brass button.

"This is lovely. Are you sharing it with me?" Carwood asked, and the magpie squawked again like it was saying yes, and then it flew off as if nothing had happened. Carwood let out another laugh, and instead of getting up like he'd initially intended, he laid back in the grass, arms resting behind his head. It was peaceful out here, he thought, and the stars were pretty. He could let the others worry about him just a bit longer.

He should've known someone would find him eventually, and he really shouldn't have been surprised as to who it was.

"Sergeant Lipton?" came that familiar flat tone, and Carwood sat up quickly to see Lieutenant Speirs walking toward him again.

"Lieutenant Speirs, sir. How… did you know where I was?"

Speirs let out a low chuckle. "I didn't. I just come to this park every now and then, and saw someone else was in my sulking space. I was annoyed til I saw it was you. Mind if I join you?"

"Please," Carwood said, and then Speirs sat down next to him closer than strictly necessary, and they both laid back down in the grass, looking up at the stars. Carwood couldn't make out the other man's face clearly in this light, and he thought it that was nice, that it gave them a sense of privacy. Carwood had stopped crying a little while ago, but he wasn't sure if his eyes were still red or not from it, and so he was especially glad that Speirs wouldn't be able to tell.

They were silent for a while, but it wasn't awkward to Carwood, even as time wore on. He wasn't about to break the silence, and he forced his mind to stay here, in the grass with the man lying next to him, instead of wandering back to his best friend who could've been more if there had been time. It was a challenge, but the sound of Speirs' soft breathing was soothing, and it helped.

"Are you alright, Lipton?" Speirs asked after a while. The question sounded stilted, awkward, as if he wasn't used to asking after people, and Carwood supposed that if he didn't have many friends, maybe he really wasn't.

Carwood stayed silent for a few moments, wondering just how much he should tell Speirs. He didn't need to dump his own troubles and worries and grief onto a superior officer who wasn't even in the same company as him, and yet there was something about Speirs that made him want to knock down all his walls with a sledgehammer.

He settled for a vague truth. "I've been better."

Speirs hummed a bit at that, but didn't push. After a while, he spoke again. "You know, I didn't get to see stars like this very much in Boston."

"I did," Carwood said. "In Huntington. I liked to lay in the backyard and look up at them. It was relaxing. Sometimes, me and Oliver would—" and then he cut himself off and swallowed heavily and sighed.

"It doesn't much matter now, I suppose. Oliver's dead. His plane crashed into the ocean," Carwood said. He wasn't sure why he shared it at all, was sure Speirs didn't want to hear it, but then again, they'd agreed to call each other friends a few months ago, even if they didn't meet up very much between now and then. That had to mean something, right?

"I'm sorry to hear that," Speirs said, even though he couldn't have any clue who Oliver was or what he meant to Carwood. Speirs sighed a bit and shook his head. "I don't know how to help, though. I'm not good at that sort of thing."

"It's alright. You being here is enough," Carwood said, and he meant it, too. Speirs was quiet, but he didn't seem to expect anything from Carwood when they spent time together, and that was just what Carwood needed. If he'd stayed with the boys, he'd have to put on the act he'd been putting on his whole life. He didn't need to act in front of Speirs. And it was hard to see in that lighting, but he was pretty sure Speirs had smiled when Carwood spoke. He would move heaven and earth to see that smile again and again and again.

They left the park and parted ways wordlessly, just waving to each other, and Carwood got back to the house he was quartered in. He was accosted by several concerned NCOs wondering just where the hell he'd gotten off to, and Carwood just smiled and told them he'd been out for a walk in the park.

He went to bed that night and at first, he dreamt of planes crashing into the sea, but then it switched and he dreamt of raccoons and magpies and Speirs, and when he woke up, he couldn't help but wonder if Speirs was another one his strays. He kind of liked the idea of it.

Chapter Text

Carwood wouldn't have another chance to collect a stray until after Carentan.

Throughout D-Day, he'd been far too busy collecting stragglers and ensuring they made it to base, and then far too busy with the attack, to even stop to consider any animals. There had been the horses, when they ran into the Germans and Guarnere got trigger-happy in his grief. They'd been shot, caught in the crossfires, and then that one horse had made those awful, pained sounds. It was a mercy when Toye put it out of its misery, but the silence grated on Carwood just as much the entire walk to their objective.

He was familiar with death, but not this close-up. Something that startled him more than anything was the silence after death. The animal—horse, human—struggled for breath, violently, loudly, horribly, and then all of a sudden it stopped, and it was silent. He wondered how quick death had been for his papa. Carwood had been told Papa died at the hospital. He must've had the same loud struggle followed by a deafening silence. Hopefully, with a plane crash, Oliver's death had been quick, because Carwood didn't much like imagining his friend stuck in his plane that crashed into the ocean, drowning at sea and struggling uselessly to draw in breaths but only getting water that filled his lungs and only sealed his fate sooner.

Other than the horses, though, Carwood really hadn't seen many animals. It made sense; those animals would've been driven away by all the noisy fighting, by the the thundering cannons and bullets and planes and tanks and screams that rumbled on underfoot and overhead and everywhere in between

So, no, it wasn't until Carwood found himself laid up in a hospital back in England, with new scars on his cheek, arm, and thigh, that he had a chance to take anything new in. The nurse that ended up taking care of him the most ended up also being from Huntington, in some twist of fate. Her name was Jessie, and Carwood had definitely seen her around, although he hadn't ever talked to her much. Still, she had that same familiar West Virginian drawl as him and had grown up going to the same grocery store as him, and it was nice to have that piece of home here, where no one sounded like him or knew his home.

It was painful to walk for a little while by nature of where one of his injuries was, which was embarrassing as all hell. At least he hadn't lost his faculties, but still he was confined to his bed for longer than he would've wanted. But his bed was by a window, so he requested that it be opened so he could at least get some fresh air. Said window was in-turn by a tree, and he swore he hadn't even gone looking for an animal before one wandered inside, climbing in through the windows: a squirrel, the English kind that was red and had that extra fur around its ears. It had a nut of some kind in its mouth, although it couldn't have been in season yet, and seemed to be looking for somewhere to put it.

Carwood supposed he shouldn't have been surprised when the little fella decided that he was a safe person to approach. The squirrel ran along the edge of the window and toward the next closest thing to it, which just so happened to be Carwood's head. He stayed perfectly still, watching the little guy with a cautious eye as it approached him, also a bit cautiously. He was wary of his injured cheek, worried the squirrel might try to jump on him right there and mess up all his stitches. It did jump on him, in the end, but directly onto the top of his head, and then it proceeded to crawl onto his shoulder and then down his arm and onto the bed. Carwood stayed perfectly still as it did so, and it crawled off the bed and scurried underneath for a moment. Then, it popped back up, nut no longer held in its mouth, and it ran up Carwood the same way it had come in, and it went out the window as if it had never been there at all.

Jessie came by a moment later. "Did I just see a squirrel run out of here?"

"Yes." Carwood couldn't help but grin as he said it.

Jessie shook her head in faux annoyance. "You know, Lipton, you always did have a reputation."

"I did?" Carwood asked, a little surprised, because he didn't think he went around town enough to have earned one of those.

"Yeah. As the kid who took in crazy animals all the time and was maybe a little off his rocker himself," Jessie said, and it could've been an insult, but she spoke with a smile and Carwood knew she meant well.

"Well, I'd have to be to volunteer to jump out of airplanes," Carwood replied evenly.

"Kid with the bleeding heart, more like it. Ever since your daddy died, you've been—" Jessie cut herself short, realizing that the comment she was about to make might not be appreciated.

And indeed, Carwood's smile faltered and he sighed. "Better to be known as the crazy animal kid than the kid with the dead dad, I guess."

"You know I didn't mean anything by it," Jessie said. "But I am sorry."

"Yeah. Me too," Carwood said, and then he looked away so she'd get the hint and leave. He did know that she hadn't meant anything by it, but one benefit of being away from home is that no one out in the military would see him and know, first thing, that his papa was dead and he hadn't ever dealt with it very well. That was the curse of growing up in a smaller, rural town, although Huntington was at least bigger than other parts of West Virginia.

But still, even out here, it wasn't like he volunteered the information himself. Sure, if one of the other fellas of Easy Company asked him about his home, he'd tell them the truth: he ran a boarding house with his mother and brother. Most of them were tactful enough to not ask about his father after the first time someone had, when Carwood had gotten all quiet and told them that Papa had died when he was only 10. He wasn't sure what he'd looked like when he said it, but word must've spread around somehow that he didn't like being asked about that—probably via Luz—and no one in the company had ever asked about his papa again if they asked about life back home. Carwood wasn't sure what was worse: asking, or the absence thereof. It hurt to talk about, sure, but Carwood wondered from time to time if he was erasing his papa's existence by not talking about him. He was dead, but he could live on in memories, but if Carwood didn't share those memories with anyone else, then was his papa ever even real? The act of talking about him brought him back to life, just for a moment, and as soon as Carwood stopped, he'd die again. So maybe it was easier for him to just stay dead.

Eventually, he was allowed to walk around in the hospital, carefully. He wandered a bit, as far from his bed as he could manage without a painful twinge in his leg, and it was during one of these wanderings that he ended up happening upon Speirs, rather than the other way around for once.

"Lieutenant Speirs!" Carwood was shocked to see the man lying in bed, looking listless and rather bored, his knee bandaged up and elevated. As soon as Speirs heard him and saw him, though, his expression shifted into one that could almost be akin to relief before he schooled it to careful neutrality, and Carwood couldn't help but wonder just who had told Speirs that he wasn't allowed to have emotions like everyone else was.

"Sergeant Lipton," Speirs said, and there was that coyote-grin that Carwood was learning to love. "I heard you'd gotten hit. I didn't know how badly."

Carwood smiled, and was going to reply, but his leg started hurting a bit, so he gestured to the edge of Speirs' bed. "Mind if I sit for a second?" Speirs nodded, and Carwood sat down on the edge of his bed, his back brushing up against Speirs' uninjured leg just a bit.

"A blast went off right in of me. Got blown back into a wall, and got some new scars to write home about—face, arm, groin," Carwood explained, smiling sheepishly at the last admission.

Speirs nodded curtly, one singular nod as if he was filing the information away for future reference, and then pointed at his own injury. "Fucked up my knee."

Carwood laughed at the bluntness of it. "I can see that, sir. Are you going to be able to return to the front?"

"Yes, thankfully. In a few weeks, once I can walk properly again," Speirs replied. "Since you're up and about, I'll assume the same is true for you?"

"Yes, they're finally letting me walk," Carwood said, with no small amount of relief in his tone.

Speirs hummed a bit, and then looked around the hospital, eyes landing somewhere in the distance. "That nurse. Is she also from West Virginia?"

Carwood followed his gaze and saw he was looking at Jessie. He laughed, a bit shocked that he'd caught that. "Yes, we're even from the same town. Didn't know her all that well, but she knows of me, apparently. Knows about my habit of taking in strays."

"Hmm. Any new strays to report, Sergeant?" Speirs asked it as if he was asking for a post-battle report, face completely serious, but Carwood couldn't help but crack a smile.

You, Carwood almost said, but he knew better. "Just a squirrel who decided to use me as a ladder when I was still stuck in my bed. It's by a window."

Speirs actually laughed a little bit, just a soft chuckle, but it was like music to Carwood's ears, and it had him beaming and his stomach feeling a little bit fluttery.

Speirs seemed to remember something, then, and he sat up a bit straighter, or as much as he could manage. "I have something for you, Lipton. But I can't reach my pack."

Carwood's curiosity was piqued. "I can grab it for you, if you tell me where in your pack it is."

"Front left pocket."

Carwood knelt over and opened the pocket, and immediately found a shiny, silver compass. It was nice, clearly once having belonged to someone wealthy, and clearly looted. But surely that couldn't be what Speirs was referring to, so he kept rummaging in the pocket for a moment.

"Did you find the compass?" Speirs asked—from where he was in the bed, he couldn't exactly see what Carwood was doing or holding.

"I did, sir, but I didn't think it was—"

"It's for you."

Carwood felt a jolt of shock run through him as he stopped looking through Speirs' pack and considered the compass closer. "Are you sure, sir?"

He turned to look at Speirs, who gave him that curt nod again. "Yes. I would've given you a lighter, but I don't think you smoke. I thought you'd like the compass, though."

There was an unspoken do you like it? in that statement, and Carwood smiled again. "I do, sir. Very much. It's very thoughtful of you."

Speirs seemed satisfied, and he wore his coyote-grin as he said, "I like shiny things. I bet I'll find lots of them, if we keep pushing further into Germany."

"Just like that magpie." A beat passed before Carwood realized that he'd said that out loud, and his cheeks reddened at Speirs' confused look. "Sorry, sir. Last time I was in England, in Aldbourne, I helped a magpie out of some mud that it was stuck in because it wanted a silver ring, and it brought me a brass button a few days later. Magpies like shiny things, too."

"Hmm." was the only response Speirs gave him, brows furrowed a bit as if he was turning over Lipton's words in his head. "Alright, then."

Carwood smiled again, and then Speirs was giving him an odd look.

"You're the only person who smiles so much, or at all, around me. Why?"

Carwood was taken aback by the question, and he had to pause for a moment to think of an appropriate answer. "Well, sir. I suppose I just enjoy your company. We are friends, after all."

Speirs seemed to not have been expecting that answer, and he seemed disbelieving. "Most people are afraid of me. Especially after D-Day. But they didn't like me much before, either."

Carwood had heard the rumors of what Speirs had done to those POWs, and the sergeant from his platoon. He bet those rumors would be expanded by the time he got back to Easy, and Speirs back to Dog. Carwood didn't really care all that much about them because he knew the man to be someone who did things because they were the only option. If Speirs had done these things, then it must've been for the best. Or maybe Carwood was just a bit more desensitized to death than the rest of the men were.

"Well, sir, that's kind of silly of them. We jump out of airplanes and run into firefights on purpose. I think that's a bit scarier," Carwood said. "But I suppose I've just never been scared of the things most people are scared of. Adopted a coyote as a kid once, you know."

"Did you really?" Speirs asked, clearly interested, and Carwood smiled again. Speirs seemed to preen in the presence of Carwood's smile, and he relaxed a bit into his pillows, clearly waiting on Carwood to tell the story.

"Yes," Carwood replied, "but I think I'll save that for another time. Have to keep you interested, somehow. Sir."

Speirs practically pouted. "Fine. I look forward to it."

Carwood smiled, and bid him farewell before hobbling back to his own bed, where the squirrel was sitting in the windowsill again, as if waiting for him. He sighed good-naturedly, and sat back down. The squirrel waited until he was completely still again before using him as its own ladder and skittering down under his bed again.

From just barely, across the way, Carwood could make out Speirs' bed. The lieutenant was still looking at him, might've watched him leave, and Carwood had to bite back a laugh when the squirrel used him as a ladder once again to get back outside. The whole time, he didn't break eye contact with Speirs, even as the squirrel climbed all the way up to his head. Once it was gone, he grinned widely, and Speirs smiled back, an open smile, more blinding than any of his coyote-grins were. Then a nurse walked by and spoke to Speirs, and the moment was broken.

Carwood sighed to himself a little bit as he laid back in his bed, studying the compass Speirs had saved just for him closely, that fluttery feeling in his stomach definitely making itself known. He felt like he was developing a bit of a schoolyard crush on Speirs, and he didn't know what to do with himself. Such thoughts were dangerous, especially here in the army, and a part of him felt guilty for even having them in the wake of Oliver's death, even though it had been a few months since then.

Still, when he shipped back out to rejoin Easy, Carwood kept the compass in his breast pocket, close to his heart, just in case he lost his way.

Time moved in a blur, and all of a sudden they were living outside in the freezing cold of the Ardennes forest in winter. Carwood was freezing, of course he was, and he was suffering through the unfortunate circumstances that they found themselves in, the same as anyone: too few supplies and a lack of adequate leadership.

He was doing what he could to hold everyone together. It was what he'd always done, ever since he was a 10 year old kid counting change to pay for his family's groceries. It was a familiar role for him to be in, and it really was no trouble to him at all. He made his rounds, checked on everyone, gave someone his winter coat when it was clear they needed it more than he did, worried about their dwindling numbers, and the lowering of their morale. He wasn't just a sergeant now, after all; he was First Sergeant, which meant it was quite literally his job to make sure everyone was doing alright.

Carwood really didn't think he'd run into any animals out here; sure, they were out in the middle of a forest, but again, with all the shelling and gunfire exchanged, they'd likely run out any living thing a long time ago. It was not to be, as Carwood returned to his foxhole one day, after making his rounds, to discover that a literal fox had decided to make its burrow in his foxhole.

"Hmm. Well, hello there, little fella. Do you think we can share?" Carwood asked as he approached and the fox froze upon seeing him. It was digging another hole in the wall of his hole, probably so that it could have some extra shelter. Really, it was probably a pretty safe and warm space for the fox, aside from the shelling that bombarded the area often. But if this fox hadn't been scared off by that already, then it probably wasn't phased by much, and it must've been determined to stay in the area no matter what. Carwood certainly wasn't going to kick it out of his foxhole, at any rate, as long as it didn't mind him.

He approached slowly and hopped back in, hands held out placatingly so that the little guy could see all his movements. He sat on the opposite end of the foxhole from it, and it continued staring at him for a few moments before it turned back and continued digging the hole it was so determined to make. Carwood watched, fascinated, and didn't dare move a muscle. It was a pretty creature, and had clearly done well for itself this winter, since it seemed to be in good shape, unlike Carwood himself, or really any of the men out here.

Once the fox had dug what it must've deemed to be a sufficiently deep hole, it crawled inside and curled up in ball, covering its snout with its fluffy tail. Carwood stayed where he was, captivated, and so he didn't notice when a visitor came up to his foxhole.

"First Sergeant Lipton."

Carwood didn't even bother looking up to see who it was; he knew it was Lieutenant Speirs, and he knew that the man didn't really give a shit about the formalities he was entitled to in his officer position—or at least, he didn't care if Carwood acknowledged them.

The man had made a habit of appearing at the oddest of times, supposedly to check-in with Easy and make sure everything was going well with them, but he made a beeline for Carwood every time he did so, scattering some of the men who were still afraid of him. Carwood thought it was funny, honestly, how scared the men were of Speirs. Even with the rumors circulating around him, Carwood couldn't find it in himself to be afraid of him, not when the man had found him something precious in the first days after the D-Day jump. The compass Speirs gave him might've had been paid in the price of blood, but strangely, Carwood didn't feel bad about it in the slightest.

"Lieutenant Speirs." He didn't look away from the hole the fox had dug.

"What are you looking at?" Speirs asked, and then he slid down into the foxhole next to Carwood. He sat close, probably closer than strictly necessary, but they could blame it on the cold if anyone asked.

"There's a fox in my foxhole," Carwood answered, pointing. From this angle, it was possible to make out the fox's tail, and he heard Speirs' breath catch in surprise as he caught sight of it, too.

"Huh. I guess that makes sense. These holes are named after them, after all," Speirs said, tilting his head in a way that reminded Carwood of a curious dog. It was a bit humorous to Carwood, and he couldn't help but wonder what the other men would think if they ever saw this side of Speirs; perhaps they'd run for the hills. Good. That meant Speirs was Carwood's and Carwood's alone. "Unfortunately, I didn't come over just for social reasons."

Carwood finally looked over at him properly, rather than just watching him through his peripheral vision, and he blamed the heat rushing through him again on their proximity and not on the way that Speirs somehow looked more ethereal in the snow than he did anywhere else. If he'd been inhuman before, he was otherworldly now. His cheeks and nose were red from the cold, and he had a bit of stubble because it was hell to shave out here, damn Winters' dedication to doing so, but it all served to make Speirs more attractive than anything else.

"No?" He asked, although he knew exactly why Speirs had come to Carwood over anyone else.

"Couldn't find Lieutenant Dike," Speirs said, no attempt made to hide his annoyance. "I wanted to know how Easy was doing, supply-wise."

Carwood gave him the latest status update he had, since he was the one keeping track of such things nowadays. They didn't have much, although the recent supply drop to Bastogne, before it was bombed, had helped. The men were freezing as hell and miserable, but Bill Guarnere still being a wise-ass and George Luz was still cracking jokes and Johnny Martin was still rolling his eyes at their antics, and that's all Carwood could hope for.

"And Dike?" Speirs asked, and Carwood had to hold back a sigh.

"He's… well, sir, he's often called up to HQ. He struggles to integrate with the men, but hell, most of us have been working together since Toccoa, and—"

Speirs cut him off. "Lipton. Give me your opinion of Dike as a conversation between friends, not as a subordinate talking to a superior."

Carwood smiled a bit, and turned back to look at the fox, who was still curled up into a ball and fast asleep. "He's not around often. That's dangerous, when you're trying to organize a company of men who are freezing their asses off and who we're losing more and more of every day. We lost a man recently, Hoobler. He found a Luger pistol after killing a Kraut on patrol, stuffed it in his pants, and then it went off and hit an artery in his leg. He was dead in minutes. And Dike was nowhere to be found, so I reported it to Winters. And hell, I don't mind doing it, someone's got to. But… he should be here." And then he laughed a bit hollowly and shook his head. "And still, I can't find it in myself to hate him. I don't trust him in a firefight, but I can't hate him."

"Why not?" Speirs asked, and he seemed genuinely curious, staring directly at Carwood and hanging onto his every word.

"Because…" Carwood shook his head again, trying to find the words. "I guess because part of me feels like he's just misunderstood, and that maybe we just need to give him a chance. Benefit of the doubt, because he had to have been put in this position for a reason. Hell, he's even tried to get to know me, he's asked me about where I'm from. And then he wandered off before I could return the favor. I can't really explain why I don't hate him, except that I see a guy who's in over his head and doesn't know how to deal with it, and I know how he must feel."

"Why do you know how he feels?" Speirs asked, and Carwood grimaced a bit. He'd told Speirs he was from Huntington, and that he liked to take-in animals, but they'd never had a conversation that went much deeper than that, regarding their lives before the war. It was easier not to talk about it, because who they were before and who they were now were undoubtedly incredibly different people. Carwood sure hadn't been much of a team player until he entered the war; he'd trusted himself and only himself to get things done, because if there was one thing he could depend on his entire life, it was himself. Carwood had changed, for sure, and he was certain that no one here could see the vestiges of that sad, lonely kid he'd once been.

But he and Speirs were friends. It was different with him, and he didn't think Speirs would wander off in the middle of the conversation.

"When I was 10," Carwood began, "my papa died in an automobile accident, and my mama was paralyzed from the waist down and had to use a wheelchair—she still has to use a wheelchair, actually. We ran a boarding house, but with papa dead and mama still healing at the hospital, it was up to me to take care of it and my little brother. Sure, neighbors and boarders offered to help, but I just… I didn't feel like I could trust them with it all. Thought it was my burden to bear, and mine alone, because I was the man of the house now. But… Jesus, I was 10. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and I sure as hell was in over my head. So while it wasn't a war, back then… I guess I just know how Dike must be feeling, and I want to believe that he can work through it, because I want to believe that I can work through it, because… I feel like no small part of me will always be that 10 year old kid with a dead dad and a hurt mom and a yolk on his shoulders."

Speirs had stayed silent throughout his rant, and Carwood sagged in on himself when he finished as if all the wind had gone out of his sails. This was the first time he'd ever really put all these thoughts into words, and definitely the first time he'd ever shared them with anyone, not even Oliver. But Speirs was a quiet man who wouldn't go blabbing all his deep dark secrets to everyone, and again, they were friends. And Carwood was so very tired of keeping everything to himself.

Speirs suddenly put his hand on Carwood's shoulder, warm and solid and grounding and real, and made very intense eye contact with him. Still, he seemed to be struggling to formulate words, brows furrowed a bit, mouth twitching as if he wanted to say something but didn't know how. Carwood just smiled at him, although it felt forced, and for some reason it seemed to amuse Speirs.

He didn't give Carwood any platitudes that anyone else would've; no "I'm sorry" or "that's sad" or "that must have been difficult" or anything of the sort. No, all Speirs said, after several moments of deliberation, was, "You are a kind-hearted man, Lipton."

Then, he squeezed Carwood's shoulder, and let go, the spot where his hand had been feeling colder the moment he moved away. The words sent a spike of warmth through Carwood again, and he was thankful that he could blame his blush on the cold weather. It wasn't what anyone else would've said, but the response was so Speirs that he knew it held a lot of weight. Still, Carwood didn't reply or thank him or even nod; he just gazed at Speirs, who gazed back, and then looked away and back at the fox and sighed.

"Foxes are often misunderstood, too, you know," Speirs said. "Sly, cunning, deceptive, not very friendly. But they're just trying to make it to the next day, same as anything else. They… can't help how they are."

It was similar to what Carwood had said about the raccoons back in North Carolina, and it made him smile, because he got the feeling Speirs wasn't necessarily just talking about the fox in that moment. "No, sir, they can't."

Speirs' expression was blank, and then he smiled, softer than his typical coyote-grin, barely there. And then the smile was gone, and he was standing and stepping out of the foxhole, and Carwood missed his warmth already. "Take care, First Sergeant. Of yourself and of the men."

"You, too, sir."

And then Speirs was gone.

It got really damn cold that night, a rare silent night with minimal shelling, and Carwood shivered a bit. He debated leaving his own foxhole to go bunk with someone else, just for the night, to share their warmth, but it turned out he didn't need to. The literal fox inside his foxhole must've gotten fed up with his constant shivering, or maybe it just wanted to share some body heat with another living thing, too, because one minute he was sitting there with chattering teeth, hardly aware of anything other than how cold he was, and the next there was warmth on his lap. He peaked open his eyes to find that the fox had curled up directly on top of him, and he couldn't help but smile.

Misunderstood creatures, indeed.

The fox was gone by the next morning, after another round of intense shelling, the one where Toye and Guarnere got hit and Buck had to back down the line. But its presence, however brief, had been welcome. There were a few days of peace, and Luz was sticker closer and closer to Carwood because he'd seemed hollowed out since Toye had gotten injured, even though he put on an act otherwise when talking to the other fellas. Carwood supposed that maybe Luz felt that he was the one guy he didn't have to act in front of, and he was honored to trust him with that—he wondered how much Luz could see through him, in turn, but never questioned it.

There was a minor incident, here, not long after Skip and Penkala died, not long after Carwood took his first drag of a cigarette after that dud landed, and Carwood had thought that he'd be joining his papa pretty soon. He and Luz stuck close together, because what else could you do after you nearly died together, and so they continued sharing a foxhole. And it was when Carwood had left at one point to go do rounds and check up on who remained of their men—so few, too few—that he found Luz swearing up a storm at something in their foxhole.

"Lip! Thank goodness you're back. This little thing is throwing a fit because I had the audacity to get back in our foxhole," Luz really did look relieved upon seeing him, and Carwood wondered for a moment if the fox had returned, but no—it was a small, ferret-like creature. It was hopping up and down and chittering angrily at Luz. Carwood had read a book on fauna in Belgium once, back in England when it became clear they were being sent to Europe, and he was pretty sure this little guy was called a stoat.

"Aww," Carwood said, and he walked forward. As soon as the little stoat saw him, it seemed to pause, as if it could sense that he was someone to be trusted.

Luz sighed and shook his head incredulously. "Jesus Christ, Lip, I swear you've got superpowers or something. If you were in a Superman comic or some shit, you'd just be, I don't know, Animal Man or some shit like that. It's uncanny, really."

"Animal Man is the best you can come up with?" Carwood asked, smiling slyly at him while Luz waved him off agitatedly. It was nice, really, to have such a fun interaction with Luz when things were getting bleaker and bleaker each passing day.

The stoat seemed to have adjusted itself to Carwood's presence, though, and then it started chittering angrily at him, too.

"See. Not every animal likes me," Carwood said, as he and Luz stood back to observe the angry creature. But then, it seemed to catch sight of something behind them, because it froze and then finally scampered away. Carwood and Luz turned around and saw Speirs approaching.

Before he got close enough to hear them, Luz muttered to Carwood, "Speaking of uncanny." Carwood just rolled his eyes at him.

"First Sergeant Lipton. Technician Luz," Speirs said as he approached, eyes flickering between the two of them in a lazy manner, as if he was purposefully projecting disinterest in them. Carwood knew better, though.

"Lieutenant Speirs," Carwood greeted cordially. It was always funny to see how different Speirs acted when it was just the two of them versus when there were other men around. He was always stiffer, and played up his spookiness. It seemed to be a bit of a game to him, Carwood thought.

"I heard a dud landed in your foxhole the other day," Speirs said. It was clear that he was asking are you okay?

"Yes, sir. But it was just that: a dud. We're alright, better than some of the men who didn't make it out," Carwood said, and it was honest. Luz side-eyed him, but Carwood ignored him.

Speirs nodded, pausing as he thought over what he wanted to say. "Right. Right, good." And then he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and grabbed two from it. "Heard you picked up smoking."

He offered a cigarette to Carwood, who took it without hesitation, ignoring the way Luz was gaping next to him. Speirs' eyes betrayed a bit of humor—he was clearly enjoying scaring the shit out of Luz—as he lit Carwood's cigarette for him, and then his own, and then they took drags of their cigarettes together.

"No new strays to report, Lipton?" Speirs asked, and it was clear that he'd decided that he did not give a shit that Luz was an audience to their conversation. Luz himself seemed to have lost interest, anyway, and he plopped back down in their foxhole.

"No, sir. You just ran off a stoat, I think," Carwood replied.

"Hmm. And your leadership situation?" Speirs asked, clearly switching on his more professional mode, a signal that he was about to leave.

"Handling it, sir."

Speirs gave him a curt nod. "Good. Until later, First Sergeant." And then he stalked off.

Carwood took another drag from his cigarette and then hopped back into he and Luz's foxhole. Luz was watching him like he'd grown another head.

"What?" Carwood asked, although he knew exactly what he was thinking.

Luz laughed. "Nothing. Just, I think you made a liar out of yourself when you said you didn't have any strays to report."

Carwood blamed his flush on the cold as he indignantly asked, "What do you mean?" even though he had a pretty good idea of what Luz meant, and Luz clearly knew it, too, based on the exasperated look he gave him.

"Right. Well, you smoke your war criminal cigarette, and have nice dreams about your war criminal bo—war criminal friend," Luz said, wincing a bit at his near slip. Carwood stiffened a bit hearing it, but then the thought occurred to him that if Luz had let it slip, maybe they weren't so different, and suddenly, the way Luz had looked at Toye when they'd found him hurt made a hell of a lot more sense.

"Alright, boy," Carwood said good-naturedly, and Luz relaxed a bit when he realized Carwood was not going to call him out on it, and they leaned into each other for warmth.

Luz stayed silent for a while, uncharacteristically, before he said, "You know, for what it's worth. I think he likes you even more than you like him."

Carwood hummed but didn't reply, and Luz didn't say anything else. Carwood could only hope that all of them—himself, Luz, Speirs, every other remaining man they had—would make it out of that damn forest.

They'd taken Foy, just barely. Dike got shot early on and froze—not that Carwood had seen the bullet wounds initially. All he'd seen was that his CO was freezing up and unresponsive, and men were dying, and they needed to move. And then Speirs came in with control of the company, and then they were moving, and then they took Foy, after a brief diversion with a sniper that Carwood and Shifty took care of.

They hadn't been given a break; they'd had to keep going, take more places, and Speirs had been CO for a few days by the time they finally reached Rachamps and got an evening indoors for the first time in a while.

Carwood felt a little shaky after everything, but he figured he was one amongst the many—or few left, really—who felt like that. He gave his roster to Speirs, who practically assaulted him with praise Carwood didn't think himself deserving of. He hadn't done anything particularly note-worthy, he thought; he'd just done what he was supposed to do. He didn't understand why Speirs felt it necessary to give him all that praise, but he'd be lying if he said that Speirs' "Hell, it was you, First Sergeant" said with a chuckle under his breath and that warm, genuine smile Carwood had only caught the smallest glimpse of didn't make Carwood feel weak in the knees.

And then came the news of his promotion, and Carwood could see how proud Speirs was of him, and it made him feel warm, even warmer than being inside a candlelit church did. Speirs left to go find Battalion, and Carwood sat back down with Luz, sinking back down into the pews and ignoring the aches in all the individual points of his body. He was sore, he was a bit shaky, and he was tired, but so were they all, right? With Speirs in charge now, though, Carwood felt like he could afford to relax for the first time in weeks, and now that he was not holding himself tensely, he was just so sore.

"You feeling alright, Lip?" Luz asked, shifting so that he and Carwood were sharing more of their body heat because Carwood was still shivering as if he were out in the cold.

"Just fine, Luz. Just tired," Carwood replied, and Luz didn't seem convinced, but he didn't say anything, just leaned in closer. Carwood leaned into him, and they fell asleep with Luz's head on Carwood's shoulder and Carwood's head leaning back into the pews.

He dreamt of his papa that night. It wasn't anything very coherent, just flashes of memories of Papa telling him about worms or teaching him how to build the hut for the ducks, and of smiles and warm hugs and kisses on his forehead when he was sick. Somewhere, deep down, Carwood would always be 10 and grieving his papa.

He awoke with a start, with tears in his eyes for reasons he couldn't quite place, and realized immediately that he was still shaking like hell, even though he was inside and should've been hot because it was so much warmer inside than it was outside. He was sweaty, and his limbs felt so stiff and sore, and he definitely had a headache. And it was a bit of a challenge to breathe—he inhaled and it hurt, and coughed on the exhale. Thankfully, Luz had shifted off of him during the night, so he didn't disturb his sleep.

Carwood couldn't be getting sick now. He couldn't. Sure, they had someone competent in charge now, but that wasn't really what upset Carwood about falling ill.

He'd had exceptional health throughout his entire childhood. The last time he'd gotten sick, in fact, Papa had been alive, and he'd never gotten sick since then. Maybe the dream about Papa should've been a sign.

Carwood glanced around the church, noting that, thankfully, all the other men were fast asleep. He wheezed through his breaths, as quietly as he could manage, hoping to get his breathing in control before anyone else woke up, and stared up at the rafters of the church.

His family had never been overly religious. They were the kind who went to church on major holidays—Easter and Christmas—and every now and then did communion at home with their own wine and bread, when the occasion called for it. But Carwood was pretty sure that seeing a barn owl up in the rafters was an omen of some kind, and not a good one. He stared at it for so long that he lost track of time, and it stared back at him, and he began to wonder if it was even real or if he'd lost his mind completely. It was high up, and he had to squint to see it, but he felt as though its eyes contained some hidden mystery or secret. Maybe the owl knew what this war was costing them. Maybe the owl knew what would become of them all. Maybe the owl just knew that Carwood had been marked from a young age to lose. Or maybe the owl knew his sins, that he'd been infatuated with Oliver and certainly was with Speirs now, and that wasn't proper for a man. They were in a church, after all, and still Carwood hadn't been able to stop himself from thinking about Speirs in a way that was undoubtedly uncouth. Carwood stared at the owl, trying to discern its secrets, but it had none to give, even if he felt like it took all of his.

By the time he looked away from the owl, other men were stirring, and so Carwood put on his best "I'm completely fine" face and smothered his coughs in his elbow and played it off as just not being used to being inside after a month or two of living outside. He wasn't the only one coughing, after all. Luz didn't seem convinced, but the others seemed to buy it, or maybe they were too tired to push him on it. When he looked back up in the rafters, the owl was gone.

Carwood might have been getting sick, but since he hadn't been sick in years, he figured his body would bounce back from it easily. Still, when they were loading the trucks to head to Alsace instead of Mourmelon, like they'd been promised, Carwood couldn't shake an uneasy feeling when he saw an owl—maybe the same owl from earlier—sitting on a post in the morning and staring him down, and he wondered again if it was a figment of his imagination.

Either way, Carwood was sure it would be fine. He would be fine, he would be right as rain in a few days, he knew so. He had to be.

Speirs questioned him on it, though.

"Are you alright, Lieutenant?" he asked, and Carwood tried not to smile at the fact that Speirs was already calling him lieutenant, even though he had yet to receive the official nod.

"I'm fine, sir. Just getting used to being back outside," which was not a lie, not in the slightest.

Speirs also didn't seem convinced, and he looked out at the horizon around them, eyes landing on the post that held the owl.

"Huh. Beautiful," he muttered, nodding his head toward it, and Carwood was just relieved that he wasn't going insane.

"Yes, sir," Carwood agreed, and then Speirs smiled at him, coyote-grin and all, before his gaze was a little more scrutinizing.

"If something is wrong, you'll tell me. That's an order, Lieutenant.”

"I will, sir," Carwood said, because he really, truly believed that nothing was overly wrong, and he'd be fine with just a little more rest.

But as the ride out from Rachamps went on, and the cigarette Luz gave him settled badly in his lungs and made him cough, just a little bit, and then a lot, Carwood wondered if maybe he was wrong about that.

He saw the owl on another post, and he couldn't help but wonder if it was following them, and if its presence really was an omen. A day or two later, when Carwood was laid up with a fever and could hardly breathe and completely delirious, he would decide that it was.

Chapter Text

Carwood didn’t see the owl again, but that might've just been because he was too busy coughing up one of his lungs in the back of the truck to pay it any heed. He'd gotten steadily worse the further they went, the chill in the air not helping in the slightest. There was no more hiding it from any of the men, no way to fool them with reassurances that he was just fine when his rebelling body said otherwise. His headache hadn't improved, and the cough just got worse and it sounded wet, and he was shaking far too hard for someone who should've been used to the cold by now.

Luz had given him a cigarette when they first left, but he refrained after that, not that Carwood would've asked for another anyway. He could barely breathe through his coughing, and breathing hurt, anyway. A cigarette didn't seem like a good idea. His thoughts briefly flitted to men dying of black lung, like what had happened to his mama's daddy before he was even born, but he banished the thought as best as he could. It wouldn't do to dwell on dying, because Carwood wasn't dying.

Speirs was none too pleased when he saw Carwood when there was a brief pause on their way to Alsace, though. The man had been making rounds throughout the trucks, checking on the men, and it was nice to see that Speirs was already taking a more active role in being the CO than Dike ever had. He was wearing his usual blank expression, though, and some of the men seemed to still be wary of him, but Carwood still thought it was funny more than anything else. He didn't expect the man to act any different around him right then, not when there were more people than just Luz around, but his face seemed to shuffle through several different emotions as if it was a deck of cards until he landed somewhere between concern and anger.

"I thought I ordered you to tell me if something was wrong," Speirs said curtly, and the others in the truck seemed anxious, although Luz next to Carwood just let out a long-suffering sigh.

"I thought I would be fine, sir," Carwood said through chattering teeth.

"Clearly not," Speirs bit out, eyes narrowing at him. "We aren't too far out from Alsace. One of the medics will check you over there. You are not to do anything other than report to a medic, and then rest. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

Speirs left with a curt about-face, and not long after, the trucks starting moving along again. Carwood didn't really have a chance to see how the others reacted to Speirs' orders for him, since he was too busy letting out a cough that he'd been holding back during the officer's visit.

True to Speirs' words, at least, they arrived at Alsace shortly afterwards, and Luz made sure that Carwood did not disobey Speirs' orders by dragging him—not that Carwood was in much of a state to resist—to Doc Roe, who took one look at him and sighed heavily.

By Roe's best estimate, it was pneumonia, or it would be soon if it wasn't already, and it was going to get worse before it would get better. Carwood had figured as much by this point, having practically felt his chills turn into a full-blown fever the instant he got off the truck. Roe told him he needed to go to an aid station, but Carwood refused; he couldn't leave the men, not now, not when they were finally recovering from the hell that had been Bastogne and the Bois Jacques and had already lost so many. And if he left now, his commission might come through, and then he might just end up getting transferred to a new unit and never see any of Easy Company again. He couldn't abide that. As excited as he was about the commission, these were his men.

Roe, thankfully, seemed to know he was fighting a losing battle, and told Carwood to wait on the steps of the building they'd met in—a dilapidated building, so it wouldn't have mattered if he'd stayed inside or not anyway considering that he would've felt the weather the same—so that he could find Speirs and determine where Carwood would be bunking for the night.

That left Carwood alone momentarily with a rapidly worsening condition. He thought he'd been bad in the truck, but now that there was nothing else to distract him from how goddamn awful he felt, it was hitting him all at once. His thoughts were sluggish and hazy, and breathing was still a chore, but he was doing it slowly to try to stave off any more coughing fits, which was not always successful.

He succumbed to one of these fits, and he felt something pressing into his leg while doing so, although he was coughing too hard to be able to see what it was. He figured that one of his men had come to keep him company and they were offering him comfort however they could, but when the fit subsided and he finally opened his eyes, he saw that a stray dog had rested its chin on his leg, looking up at him with what Carwood could only describe as a concerned expression, if it were possible for animals to make such faces.

The dog looked a bit like a coyote, even though coyotes didn't live in Europe. It reminded him of Willy, and then Carwood was filled with this sense of deep, aching sadness that he couldn't quite place. He missed Willy. He missed home. He missed his family and friends. He missed Oliver. He missed Papa. The closest he could come to naming the feeling was that he felt hollowed out, like there was a part of him that was missing, waiting to be filled, but he doubted he'd find whatever he needed during the war. He reached out and scratched the dog on the head, and it leaned into him a bit. Carwood had to blink away tears that were coming without his permission. He hadn't cried properly in years, not since that moment by the pond with his ducks, and that wouldn't change now just because a stray dog decided to be his friend.

"Sir." It was the unmistakable lilt of Roe, who'd probably come back to lead him to wherever he'd be bunking for the night. Carwood looked up from the stray and saw that Luz and Speirs were flanking Roe, as if they expected him to try to make a break for it. As if he even could, with his fever and light-headedness.

Carwood wasn't sure what the expression on his face was, but it must've been something other than neutral, because Luz's eyebrows seemed to shoot up in surprise and Speirs' eyebrows furrowed together as if concerned, and even Roe's face had a more pinched quality to it than normal. Carwood wondered if maybe he wasn't as successful at staving down his tears as he thought he was. The stray at his legs leaned against him protectively.

"Let's get you to bed," Speirs said, and it was gentle, soothing, and the stray even relaxed when Speirs approached, so Carwood did, too, letting Speirs pull him to his feet and leaning against his shoulder when the world spun too much.

"You're a real pro at making friends, Lip. Animals and humans," Luz said as he took his place on Carwood's other side, likely there to steady him in case he suddenly listed the other way. The stray was following them, having fallen into step beside Roe, who was leading the way and glancing back occasionally. The dog would glance back every time Roe did, and it was almost comedic.

"That one reminds me of my coyote," Carwood said, and his words were a little slow and his eyelids were drooping, but he still had to make it to CP.

"Your coyote?" Luz asked, incredulous.

At the same time, Carwood felt a pleasant vibration as Speirs hummed a bit. "You never did tell me more about that, and you said you would."

"Hmm. Right," Carwood said, and he could feel himself getting so incredibly tired, walking almost as much of a chore as breathing. He wasn't going to say anything more, but then Speirs nudged him a bit, and he remembered himself. "Her name was Willy. I was 8, I think. Found her when she was just a pup, had a broken leg. Thought she was a dog, but Mama said otherwise real quick. Still. Made Papa make her a splint so she could get better, and then we let her go, but she came back once a week or so for a few years after that."

"Why was her name Willy?" Speirs asked, and there was a brief pause in their slow, arduous trek where they had to stop to help Carwood get over some rubble, no way around it. Carwood thought about his response during this moment, but he couldn't quite figure out how to explain Willis and his insults and how Carwood chose not to be mean back at him.

"I didn't want to be a bully, too." Carwood settled on that answer, thinking it was perfectly understandable, but maybe it wasn't, based on the laugh Luz let out.

No one asked him to explain anymore, and in what seemed like a blur, they were inside a building, and there were stairs that they had to go up. They were too narrow for all of them, so Roe led the way, no one even bothering to stop the dog from following him up, and then Speirs supported Carwood on the way up. It was a horribly slow process, and Carwood somehow found himself even dizzier and more out-of-it than he was before. He thought idly that it had been a miracle that he hadn't coughed on his way over yet, but about halfway up the stairs, he started hacking and didn't stop for at least 30 seconds. Speirs was by him the whole time, supporting his body weight because it was clear that Carwood couldn't. Carwood was seeing stars when he stopped and took in ragged breaths that hurt horribly and nearly set him off again. He was also pretty sure he was shaking, and he snaked an arm around Speirs' shoulder, fisting tight onto the fabric of his jacket, not caring that he was making a scene in front of his CO. He simply couldn't spare the effort.

"We're almost there, Carwood, come on," Speirs said, and that jolted Carwood on more than anything, mostly because he'd never heard Speirs say his first (well, middle) name before.

Eventually, they were upstairs, in the threshold of a room, but there was only a singular bed in it, and Carwood was fairly certain he was billeting with Speirs.

"Sir, you should take the bed, I'll—"

"You're sick," Speirs said, and then he shuffled Carwood over toward the bed and dumped him on it rather ungracefully, mostly because Carwood found himself to be a bit boneless in that moment. The stray dog immediately walked up to Carwood and started sniffing his hand, which was hanging off the side of the bed.

What followed was a bit of a blur, as Carwood's headache decide to make itself much more known now that he wasn't moving, and so did all the other gunk in his head, and he was shaking so hard he knew that his fever was continuing to rise. He saw faces floating around him, heard voices speaking to him, made out silhouettes, felt himself being moved and shifted as someone took off his boots and belt and other poky parts of his uniform, but Carwood found himself transfixed on a point just beyond the stray dog, who was sitting eerily still. The other people around him he couldn't make out, figured they must be Roe and Speirs and probably Luz again, but beyond the dog, in the corner of the room, he could swear he saw his papa, standing there and staring at him, arms crossed over his chest like he often had when he was deep in thought, a worried expression on his face.

"What's wrong?" Carwood managed to rasp out, and the other shadows moving around him—someone had been in the process of tucking blankets all around him—paused for a moment when he spoke. "Papa, what's wrong?"

But Papa didn't say anything, just stood there and looked worried and sad, and Carwood never much liked seeing his papa sad, not that he often had. He remembered there being at least a day a year, though, not too far off from Christmas, where Papa would look a bit off. Carwood hadn't learned until he was older, after Papa was dead, that it was because it was the anniversary of one of Papa's closest friends dying of black lung, just like Mama's daddy had. Papa had worked in the mines for a few years before he starting having a little trouble breathing, and then he and Mama decided to risk it all when Carwood was 2 years old and escape before the mines killed Papa, too; there were no mines near Huntington, and they could start anew. Anything was better than the mines. Not that it mattered all that much in the end, with the automobile accident and all that.

"I don't have black lung, Papa, it's just pneumonia," Carwood muttered, even though his lungs felt like they would kill him, and he wondered if this was the universe's way of getting back at his papa for escaping the coal mines that should've been the death of him. "'S just pneumonia."

But the visage of Papa was undeterred by Carwood's assurances, and the stray dog next to him laid its head on his stomach, and he was warm, and Carwood turned away from his papa and sighed, although it turned into a coughing fit that had him curling up into a ball on the bed. There were warm hands on him, someone's fingers running through his hair, and a soothing voice speaking above him. Maybe it was his papa comforting him just like he had way back when Carwood had last been sick.

Carwood sighed and fell asleep.

He woke up pressed between two warm bodies, the one laying by his chest and stomach significantly smaller and furrier than the one at his back. The stray dog had evidently decided to hop on the bed and curl into him at night, and admittedly, Carwood did feel pretty warm, but that also definitely had to do with the distinctly human presence behind him, whose arms were wrapped around his waist in a very intimate embrace. He felt more clear-headed than he had when he first went to sleep, and he wondered just how long it had been. And also, who was in bed behind him, although he had a suspicion he knew who it was, looking out at the empty bedroll in the room.

He must've shifted and woken the man behind him up, because sure enough, Speirs' voice was murmuring in his ear. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," Carwood said, but it came out as a wheeze and he coughed a bit, waking the stray dog up. "A little."

He wanted to ask why Speirs had decided to get in bed with him and hug him so closely, but he felt far too warm to really care about that. Speirs placed a warm hand on his forehead and Carwood leaned into the touch.

"You still have a fever," Speirs said with a hint of a sigh. "You were shivering from it. The dog was already up in bed with you, but you were still cold, so…"

Carwood smiled and closed his eyes, content. "Well, I'm warm now. Thank you."

Speirs hummed and they remained in that position, Speirs' hand going from feeling Carwood's forehead to carding through his hair while the dog settled back down into sleep.

"Think we ought to name 'im," Carwood muttered, although sleep colored. "You got any ideas?"

"Um," Speirs said, and Carwood wanted to huff a laugh because the man was so rarely unsure of himself, but laughing would've hurt, so he didn't. "Sparky?"

"Isn't that what some people call you?"

"Yes. But it was the only name I could think of."

Carwood did laugh, now, and then he started coughing and it hurt like hell while Speirs swore behind him. But it didn't ruin any of Carwood's mirth, and he eventually settled down again, finally shifting his position a bit so that he could turn his head and look Speirs in his eyes. Their faces were incredibly close; they could feel the heat of each other's breaths. Carwood couldn't help but smile.

"Sparky the man and Sparky the dog," He whispered, and Speirs smiled, too, and even chuckled a bit.

"I think you're still a bit delirious, Carwood," he said good-naturedly.

It was an innocent comment, but it made Carwood remember seeing Papa in the corner of the room, and he choked a bit on a gasp as he turned to look again. But there was no one there, and there probably never had been, and in his still-feverish state, that was the worst thing. He began to cry, and he couldn't even muster up the strength to try to stop himself, and then it became worse, full-body sobs that were probably a bit noisy but that he could blame on trying to breathe, if anyone else in the building could hear him other than Speirs. He couldn't hide it from Speirs, and the hiccuping sobs turned into a painful coughing fit, but then he was still crying once he was done coughing.

He didn't know why he was crying, exactly, but maybe he'd finally just reached his own breaking point. Maybe he'd cracked like Buck had and he'd have to be sent back behind the line, like he probably should've been the moment he started getting sick. His mind kept swirling to all that he'd lost: Papa, Oliver, Hoobler, Skip, Penkala, all those other good men who were gone or who would never be the same, all those people he should've been able to help but couldn't, and maybe he mourned the loss of himself, a little bit, because he'd always been so focused on helping everyone else that he didn't really know who he was.

When he was 10 and cried at the pond after releasing the ducks, he'd been alone. Now, there was someone else with him, and as embarrassing as it was to have a breakdown in front of his CO, said CO didn't seem to mind. He just pulled Carwood into a hug, angled so that they were on their sides facing each other, now, and rubbed a soothing hand up and down his back. Carwood was sure he looked a mess, snot-nosed and red-eyed, hiccuping as his sobs calmed and he tried to breathe because his lungs were burning and he was light-headed from the effort.

"I'm sorry," Carwood rasped as soon as he had control of himself. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." He didn't know what he was sorry for, but it felt important.

Speirs shushed him and then did something that sent sparks of electricity down Carwood's spine: he kissed his forehead, as if Carwood was the most holy thing in the world. Carwood offered him a wobbly smile, as genuine as he could make it, but he was getting tired again after that fit and there was a warm dog pressed against his back and a warm, lovely, handsome man holding him in his arms, and that hollow ache deep down might've still been there, but for right now, he was safe.

"I've always admired you for your strength, you know," Speirs said after a few moments, just before Carwood drifted off to sleep all the way. He forced his eyes open to look at Speirs' own, the man's lovely greenish-hazel eyes sparkling like they had in the church in Rachamps. Carwood didn't say anything, just lifted his eyebrows a bit to encourage Speirs to explain.

"It takes a lot of strength to be able to care about things the way you do. Animals, people, like Luz said. It comes naturally to you. For a while, I even thought you were a bit too perfect, too inhumanly kind," Speirs continued. Carwood huffed, a bit incredulous that anyone could view him as perfect or inhuman—that it was Speirs who viewed him this way was a bit ironic, and from the man's slight smile, he knew it too.

And then Speirs sighed a bit. "And then I kept watching, and you told me about your parents, and I realized that you're just as scared as the rest of us are. You've just had more experience in hiding it. And I also began to wonder if you've ever let yourself be taken care of. And I think the answer to that is a resounding no."

"Hey, now—"

"Have you ever done anything for yourself, Carwood? A fling after school, sneaking out of the house after dark, anything?"

Carwood flushed a bit and shook his head no, because even though he'd tried going to college, that hadn't worked out due to financial struggles in the family, anyway. "I was always… just busy. But… But I would've, when I got back from the war, if…"

Speirs stayed silent, waiting for him to speak. And eventually Carwood found both his words and his courage, but if Speirs' forehead kiss was anything to go off of, then he could trust him. "My friend, Oliver, from back home. I'd had a crush on him for years, but didn't think he would ever like me back, but then, before he shipped out, he kissed me, and promised there would be more when we both got back."

"But he won't be coming back, will he?" Speirs asked quietly, gently. "He was your friend who died back when we were in Aldbourne, right?"

Carwood nodded, closing his eyes as a wave of grief went through him. His thoughts flitted to the owl in the church, a creature that flew with poise and grace, delicate and deadly, and he wondered if that was what Oliver might've been like when he was flying his plane. And then he thought about Speirs, and how what he had been feeling for the man was similar to what he felt for Oliver, but in a different way. Oliver had been a friend since childhood, his first real shot at any relationship, and there was a bit of innocence in that. But he had met Speirs in war, and they both had blood on their hands, now, and Carwood wasn't who he had been before the war, even though he wasn't exactly sure what he'd been morphed into. Carwood opened his eyes again, and saw before him a path to figuring it out, a silver compass flashing to the forefront of his mind.

"It sounds awful of me to say after that, but… I've had my eye on another guy since then. And I think he likes me back."

Speirs stiffened a bit and tried to be nonchalant, but it was clear that he was anxious about just who that other guy might be. Carwood couldn't help but chuckle—and then cough a bit—at his reaction.

"Surely you know it's you by now, Ron." It was the first time Speirs' first name had ever left Carwood's lips, and there was something sacred in the shape of that syllable, as if it was the only prayer Carwood would ever need.

Speirs—Ron—smiled that same, genuine smile he had in Rachamps, and then he pressed their foreheads together.

"Sleep, Carwood. We'll sort ourselves out when you don't have a fever and can breathe without coughing again."

Carwood slept.

By the time they reached Haguenau, Carwood no longer had a fever, but he still had full-body chills and a cough and felt like shit. Ron had hardly let him out of his sight after that first night shared in bed together, and Carwood didn't mind in the slightest. His fever had gotten worse again after that moment where they'd talked, and he'd seen shadowy visages of Papa, Oliver, and even Hoobler and his Luger pistol, but then there had been Ron there with gentle words to lull him back to himself. Sparky the dog stuck close-by, too, but unfortunately, he had to stay behind in Alsace, and Carwood felt a pang of sadness as they moved on. He just hoped the dog would be alright, but he seemed to be a highly resourceful and intelligent little guy, so he bet he would be.

He didn't actually find any strays here, but there was a night filled with his drunken ramblings about flamingos to Ron, who dutifully nodded and listened to him as if his desire to see flamingos was the most fascinating thing he could've been hearing about it. The flamingos would've been neat, definitely the most exotic stray he'd ever taken home, although apparently Luz had spread word around about how Carwood had adopted a coyote as a kid and everyone seemed to find it utterly unbelievable, which did annoy Carwood a bit because he didn't think he did anything significant in that regard.

Maybe Willy was the reason that Carwood had never been off-put by Ron and his coyote-grin, though, and the reason why they had come together in such a natural way. Where most people looked at Ron and saw danger, Carwood saw someone who just needed someone to remember that he was human, too.

So Carwood rambled about flamingos and let himself be vulnerable, and in turn he got to hear things about Ron he bet that no one else had ever heard, about how he was the youngest of 5 and the rest of his family had an odd mix of Scottish and Boston accents, but he'd done everything he could to get rid of his own mostly-Bostonian accent once shipping out because he thought the men would respect him less for it, and how he never fit in as a kid and couldn't understand why, and how he still didn't understand just what Carwood saw in him that no one else seemed to see.

"I see you," Carwood said, flushed from alcohol, grin a bit dopey.

Ron smiled at him, sunny and glorious and care-free, and Carwood knew he'd do anything to see that smile more often. "I see you, too, Carwood."

They were in Austria, in Hitler's Eagle Nest, and the war was over. Well, in Europe, anyway, and Carwood did his best to focus on the joy he felt knowing that all of his men were safe—as could be, anyway—without worrying about his little brother George out in the PTO. Besides, there was Ron, laying languidly on a chair, taking in the sun, clearly a little drunk on Nazi wine and liquor. Winters dragged Nixon off somewhere, and Harry wandered off on his own, citing something about writing a letter to Kitty, so that left Ron and Carwood alone.

When Carwood had gotten better from his pneumonia, they'd sorted themselves out just like Ron said they would. What Carwood appreciated most about Ron was their conversations, especially because Ron wasn't much of a talker around anyone other than him, and Carwood didn't really talk to people so much as he listened. But with Ron, it was easy, natural, and Carwood often found himself baring parts of his soul he never thought he'd share with anyone, laying together in their shared billets, clothes scattered about the floor, smoking cigarettes in bed with naught on but their dog tags, wound around each other's limbs.

It had been a tad embarrassing, at first, how little Carwood knew about sex, but he'd never really desired it all that much until he got to know Ron. Truly, it hadn't been that difficult for him to abstain in order to keep on working, and he'd privately never quite understood the rest of the men's desire for it—he didn't begrudge them for it, it just was never a priority of his, never something that had captured his interest. And then he met Ron, and he finally understood the drive. He'd told Ron as much, who had been so kind and understanding and reassured him that they would figure out what worked best for them as they went. And, well, Carwood didn't have any other frame of reference, but from the way he felt and the noises of pleasure Ron often made, he figured they were doing something right.

Ron also bore his soul out to Carwood, often after they finished for the night and were still a bit slick with sweat. He told Carwood how he was scared out of his mind, how he used to be certain he'd die in the war and had long accepted his demise, but didn't know what to do with himself now that it was looking more and more likely that he'd survive it. He'd been an accountant, before, but he'd never enjoyed it and even if he'd never fit in with the other men, he sure fit in with war. He told Carwood about the First World War veteran who'd been missing his arm that Ron had given the kitten to, all that time ago. The veteran and Ron had met in a bar and were chatting about history, since it had always been a passion of Ron's, and it had ended in an a fling. They'd met up a few times, but had cut it off due to the knowledge that Ron would be shipping away soon. Ron remembered him mentioning that he wanted a cat to keep him company, though, which is why he'd brought Carwood and the kitten to him. And still, Ron had never learned the man's name, and the man had never learned Ron's name, because it had been easier and safer that way. Ron admitted with that coyote-grin of his that he'd gotten a bit of a thrill out of fucking an older man, and Carwood playfully nudged his shoulder and got them going again.

In the here and now though, just the two of them in loungers in the Eagle's Nest, they were content to lay together, heads close enough that Carwood could smell the alcohol on Ron's breath, but it just made him think of the night he'd rambled on and on about flamingos, and he couldn't help but smile. He nuzzled against Ron's shoulder, turning so that he could press his lips against his neck, grinning to himself when he felt Ron shudder a bit at the contact.

"We made it," Ron said, and there was disbelief in his tone. "Well. It's not over yet. But…"

"We made it through Europe," Carwood agreed. "Let's not think on the other part of the war just yet. Let's just be here."

"Yes." Ron shifted and kissed the top of Carwood's head, and Carwood leaned further into him, sighing contentedly. They fell asleep like that, but there was no danger in it; nobody was going to come and bother them, not when the rest of them were too busy celebrating the end of the war in Europe.

When they woke up, the sun was further down in the sky, and Ron was unquestionably sobered up, although he'd curled further around Carwood in his sleep. It was nice to wake up next to someone else, to have the warmth of another person who you trusted pressed against you after so many months spent freezing. Carwood didn't want to move, but they had to, mostly because Ron had to get up and take a piss after all that he drank before falling asleep. As he carefully extricated himself from Carwood's arms, Carwood stretched out on the chair they'd been sleeping in before getting up to lean against the balcony and look out at the landscape below. There were birds flitting about, and Carwood stuck a hand out, not because he expected any to fly up to him, but because they looked as free as he finally felt, for the first time in his life.

He supposed, given his track record, he really should've expected one to actually fly up and land on his hand; it was a barn swallow, and it seemed perfectly content to use his hand as a roost for the moment, twittering a bit before using its beak to adjust the feathers on its wings. He even moved a bit so that he was less leaning on the balcony and more inside the building, and still the bird seemed content to stay where it was.

"How do you do that?" Ron's question signaled his return, and Carwood stood to see him standing in the doorway of the balcony, staring at Carwood with an incredulous yet fond expression.

"I don't know at this point," Carwood said, tentatively reaching out with his free hand to pet the bird's head with one of his fingers. It actually leaned into his touch a bit, and Carwood began to worry that it was sick, because he didn't think this was normal behavior for a bird.

Ron huffed a laugh and chanced coming closer, but the bird didn't really seem to mind at all. "You're like Snow White."

"From that movie from a few years back? I never saw it."

"I saw it with my sisters when a few of them came back for a visit," Ron replied. "She sings and animals flock around her."

"Hmm. Well, I don't sing," Carwood said, and then the bird decided it was done resting and flew away, and then he and Ron leaned against the edge of the balcony together, close enough that their shoulders were touching.

"I bet you'd have a nice singing voice," Ron said, and Carwood laughed and elbowed him a bit but didn't deign that with a response.

They stood in silence for a little while, watching the sun set, and Ron leaned over and rested his head on Carwood's shoulder.

"We never had any pets. With five kids in Boston, it was just too much," he said after a few moments.

"We only ever had chickens as our official pets," Carwood said. "And they were more there for utility than anything else."

"So all those animals you took in weren't pets?"

"Not technically," Carwood said with a bashful smile.

"Maybe we could get one," Ron said. "After the war."

Carwood smiled wider, thrilled that Ron was imagining an after the war at all, and that it included Carwood.

"Yeah. Maybe we could."

They stood in silence for a few more moments before Carwood whispered to Ron, "I love you so big."

"I love you so big, too, Carwood."

Carwood stepped off the train and was met with Huntington for the first time in years. It seemed unchanged, and there was something novel in that.

George wasn't home yet, but he'd survived the war and would be sent home eventually, so Carwood didn't have anyone to greet him at the train station, since Mama couldn't make it out, which was just fine by him, since he could use the walk to clear his head a bit and get him used to the sights and sounds of his hometown again.

Ron had gone back to Boston, just for now, just so he could sort things out with his family. He'd come out and visit Carwood in Huntington before long.

Carwood honestly hadn't been looking for any animals on the walk back, but then he heard pitiful, distressed meowing from an alleyway, and it reminded him so much of Lucky the kitten that he had to go and investigate. He found a scraggly black cat stuck inside a trash can, meowing for anyone to hear it. It had piercing green eyes that reminded Carwood of Ron, so he gently picked it up, ignoring its hissing and the way it tried to scratch at his hands, and cradled it in his arms. It continued to hiss, but was not trying to scratch him anymore, and Carwood knew he'd found just the right cat for him and Ron.

When he made it home, Mama laughed in relief at the sight of him and of the cat.

"You haven't changed a bit, have you?" She asked, smiling at him, eyes filling with tears.

"I have," Carwood said, because he wouldn't lie to his mother, "but I think I just figured myself out a little better."

Mama smiled at him. "Maybe so. But you'll always be my little boy with a big heart. Look at you and this cat."

The cat had gone silent and had been staring at her with its striking green eyes while they spoke, just like how Ron had a bit of a staring habit that was off-putting to everyone but Carwood.

"Yeah. I think I might be keeping this stray," Carwood said, thinking of Ron. Mama laughed and pulled him into a hug

Imagine his surprise when Ron stepped off the train a few days later with a dog of his own at his side, one that looked a bit like a chocolate lab but not quite because it had some white patches of fur.

"I took after you," Ron explained sheepishly. "He was a stray, and he latched onto me, and he reminded me of you."

"I can't wait until you meet my cat," Carwood said, and they laughed but couldn't do any more because they were in public.

Later that evening, in the privacy of Carwood's bedroom, Ron pushed him up against the wall and kissed him, and Carwood was fondest of all of this stray he'd managed to bring home with him.